POST     LIMINIUM 


All  rights  reserved 


POST  LIMINIUM:  ESSAYS 
AND  CRITICAL  PAPERS 
BY     LIONEL     JOHNSON 

EDITED      BY      THOMAS       WHITTEMORE 


NEW  YORK 

MITCHELL   KENNERLEY 

MCMXII 


UNIVE^'-  -^^^^^ 


LVDOVICAE  IMOGEN  GVINEY 

HVIVS   LIBRIS   SCRIPTORI 

CVRATORIQVE 

CARISSIMAE 

SVPERSTES 

D.   D.   D. 

T.  W. 


PREFACE 

Lionel  Johnson  was  born  on  the  15th  of  March,  1867, 
at  Broadstairs  in  Kent.  Chiefly  English  and  Welsh, 
with  an  Anglo-Irish  strain  especially  valued  and 
emphasized  by  him  in  the  latter  part  of  his  short  life 
he  cannot  correctly  be  called  an  "  Irishman,"  even 
though  he  so  called  himself  frequently  after  1890.  He 
was  educated  at  Winchester  College  and  at  New 
College,  Oxford,  graduating  with  honours.  Both 
places,  Winchester  especially,  took  a  lasting  hold  on 
his  memory  and  affections.  On  St.  Alban's  Day, 
1891,  he  was  received  by  the  Rev.  William  Lock- 
hart,  at  St.  Etheldreda's,  London,  into  the  Catholic 
Church.  He  read  many  languages,  but  did  not 
travel  abroad.  From  first  to  last,  circumstances 
enabled  him  to  lead  his  own  recluse  and  happy  life ; 
his  only  material  drawback  was  a  constitution  always 
frail,  but  he  loved  the  open,  and  was  a  great  walker. 
His  critical  powers  were  in  their  full  play  during  the 
ten  years  (1891-1901)  in  which  he  lived  and  worked 
in  London.  Yet  he  published  three  books  only  : 
The  Art  of  Thomas  Hardy ^  a   broadly-planned  and 


Vlll  PREFACE 

masterly  prose  commentary  of  1896  ;  and  his  beautiful 
verses  in  two  slender  volumes :  Poevis,  1895,  and 
Ireland,  1897.  He  never  married.  During  the  last 
year  of  his  life  he  was  a  house-bound  invalid  in 
his  Clifford's  Inn  chambers,  but  had  apparently  quite 
recovered  his  usual  health,  when,  on  September  29, 
1902,  he  met  with  a  pitiful  accident  which  caused  his 
death  on  October  4.  He  was  buried  in  St.  Mary's 
Cemetery,  Kensal  Green. 

Lionel  Johnson  belonged  to  an  English  literary 
group  of  meteoric  brilliancy,  over  many  of  whom 
hung  a  singularly  tragic  fate.  In  the  matter  of  art 
his,  the  most  reticent  and  the  most  sensitive  expres- 
sion among  them,  was  also,  beyond  all  doubt,  the 
soundest  and  the  most  robust.  Mr.  Yeats,  his  fellow- 
worker,  alludes  to  "  the  loneliness  and  gravity  of  his 
mind,  its  air  of  high  lineage."  This  is  an  accurate 
observation.  The  young  critic's  every  utterance  is 
remarkable  for  its  individual  native  balance ;  its  fear- 
lessness ;  its  patience  and  courtesy  under  stress ;  its 
unfailing  mental  hospitality;  its  sweet  old-fashioned 
scholarship,  full  of  "ease  and  pleasantness,  and  quiet 
mirth ; "  for  what  he  himself  calls  in  another  "  an 
almost  Latin  clearness  and  weight : "  the  charming, 
arresting  word  of  one  who  lives  chiefly  in  the  spirit, 
above  the  fogs  of  human  prejudice,  with  "  the  best  that 
has  been  thought  and  said  in  the  world."  He  was 
a  very  great  loss  to  a  hurried  generation  which  did 
not  fail  altogether  to  appreciate  him. 

The    papers  chosen   to   form   this   book   comprise 


PREFACE 


about  one-fourth  of  the  unpublished  material  gathered 
together.  The  quality  in  all  is  much  the  same.  What 
is  here  included  to  represent  an  excellent  output  shows 
primarily  the  characteristic  facets  of  the  writer's  austere 
but  opulent  mind.  Things  "occasional"  indeed,  but 
written  with  unprofessional  enjoyment ;  protests,  not 
heavily  worded,  which  go  far  and  deep ;  telling 
summaries,  in  a  packed  space,  of  great  works  and 
great  lives  ;  disquisitions  of  a  wise  and  humorous 
mind  on  fresh  subjects,  or  on  subjects  never  stale, — 
these  form  the  bulk  of  the  contents.  It  is  hard  to  be 
sure  that  one  has  chosen  satisfactorily  on  behalf  of 
a  writer  whose  own  choice  was  so  fastidious.  Lionel 
Johnson,  had  he  been  rich  in  years  as  in  gifts,  might 
have  left  all  these  little  essays  and  reviews  unpub- 
lished. To  print  them,  to  weld  them,  is  to  take  their 
author  a  little  off  his  guard.  Yet  we  may  be  thankful 
to  have  saved  them. 

The  disconnected  papers  on  his  old  tutor  and 
greatly  loved  friend,  Walter  Pater,  have  been  gathered 
under  one  heading.  They  seem  to  point  towards  a 
task  never  even  begun,  something  similar  to  the 
admirable  study  of  Mr.  Hardy,  only  necessarily  in- 
formed with  yet  more  knowledge,  insight  and  affec- 
tion. If  the  brilliant  early  Hobby-Horse  critique  upon 
Mr.  Robert  Bridges  be  missed  from  this  volume,  the 
reasons  are  to  be  found  in  Mr.  Johnson's  own  letters 
in  Tlie  Athencsimi^  dated  June  i,  and  July  i8,  1896. 
Again,  as  there  is  already  in  print  a  careful  and 
solidly  conceived  review  by  Mr.  Johnson  of  the  poetry 


X  PREFACE 

of  James  Clarence  Mangan,**  it  was  thought  well  to 
include  here  only  the  slighter  but  more  animated 
account  of  that  little-known  genius,  which  figured  in 
a  London  daily. 

Once  more,  an  account  of  the  Gordon  Riots  (pub- 
lished by  the  Catholic  Truth  Society),  and  two  narra- 
tives which  were  printed  by  The  Pageant^  1896  and 
1897,  though  expressive  in  a  spirited  way  of  their 
author's  feeling  about  literary  decadence  and  about 
the  trials  of  the  Church  in  France,  were  regretfully 
excluded  from  a  volume  such  as  this,  where  narrative 
has  no  place,  because  the  colouring  of  each  part 
must  be  more  or  less  blended  in,  if  it  is  hoped  to 
make  upon  the  reader  any  homogeneous  impression. 

The  contributions  to  The  Spectator  were  all  unsigned. 
So  were  those  which  appeared  in  The  Academy^  save 
the  four  entitled  Thackeray,  Byron,  Hardy  and 
Friends  that  Fail  Not ;  the  same  may  be  said  of  all 
the  papers  from  that  interesting  and  long-extinct 
journal,  T)ie  Anti-jfacobin,  excepting  the  Marie 
Bashkirtseff,  signed  in  full  "  Lionel  Johnson,"  and 
one  brief  chapter  called  Voluntary  Paupers  (on  the 
same  general  subject  as  Friends  that  Fail  Not,  and 
here  incorporated  with  it  under  due  indications),  which 
bears  a  signature  reversed,  "J.L."  Anonymous  also 
were  the  criticisms  in  The  Daily  Chronicle,  with  the 
single  reserv^ation  of  Thoughts  on  Bacon,  signed 
"  L.J."     The   Outlook  and    Speaker   articles  were  all 

*  "  A  Treasury  of  Irish  Poetry,"  edited  by  Stopford  A.  Brooke 
and  T.  W.  Rolleston,  London.  Smith,  Elder  &  Co.,  1900.  Pp. 
241-250. 


PREFACE  XI 

signed  in  full.  The  Fools  of  Shakspere,  a  boy's 
attempt,  naturally  over-florid,  was  signed  "  L.  P.  John- 
son." The  "  P."  indicates  Pigot,  a  middle  name  figur- 
ing as  his  in  College  registers,  but  never  used,  either 
in  private  or  in  public,  in  later  life.  Lastly,  it  should 
perhaps  be  stated  that  the  above  list,  as  well  as  a  very 
few  verbal  alterations,  base  their  genuineness  upon  the 
Editor's  access  to  Mr.  Johnson's  published  papers,  as 
filed  by  his  own  hand,  and  kindly  lent  by  his  sister, 
Miss  Isabella  Johnson. 

The  Latin  title,  an  old  legal  one,  alludes  to  the 
right  of  a  man,  after  a  lapse  of  time,  to  enter  again 
into  his  own,  over  his  former  threshold.  It  is  hoped 
that  in  this  unpretentious  book  there  may  be  newly 
heard  the  idiosyncratic  footfall,  always  light,  of  one 
untimely  gone  away, 

"  Where  clowdless  Quires  sing  without  teares." 

Lionel  Johnson  had  a  genius  for  friendship.  May 
he  still,  under  cover  of  these  not  least  deliberate  of  his 
moods,  make  and  keep  new  friends. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Notes  on  Walter  Pater — 

I.  Mr.  Pater  upon  Plato i 

11.  Mr.  Pater's  Humour ii 

III.  Mr.  Pater  and  his  Public 14 

IV.  The  Work  of  Mr.  Pater 19 

Charlotte  Bronte  and  her  Champion    ....  42 

Savonarola 50 

Lucretius  and  Omar 58 

The  Fools  of  Shakspere 64 

William  Blake 81 

Saint  Francis 9° 

The  "  Hardness  "  of  Dante 97 

Leonardo  da  Vinci loi 

R.  L.  Stevenson        ........  106 

The  Soul  of  Sacred  Poetry 112 

The  Poets  of  the  Nineteenth  Century         .        .        .  120 

Renan  truly  Shewn 127 

Thoughts  on  Bacon 131 

BoswELL 136 

Mr,  Hardy's  later  Prose  and  Verse      ....  142 

Charles  Stewart  Parnell 150 

xiii 


XIV  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Pascal 155 

Erasmus,  my  Darling 161 

Poetry  and  Patriotism  in  Ireland         ....  165 

The  Inimitable  Lucian 188 

Lord  Byron 193 

O  rare  George  Borrow  ! 200 

Octavius  Pulleyn 204 

Friends  that  Fail  Not 209 

Clarence  Mangan 21S 

Santo  Virgilio 223 

Archbishop  Laud 229 

A  Word  about  Thackeray 235 

Coventry  Patmore's  Genius 238 

Marie  Bashkirtseff 245 

"Father  Izaak" 250 

The  Strain  of  Mysticism  in  the  English      .        ,        .  255 

Cant 257 

Burke 260 

An  Old  Debate 266 

Henry  Vaughan,  Silurist 270 

Thomas  a  Kempis 276 

The  Age  of  Dryden 283 

Matthew  Arnold 28S 

Cardinal  Newman 298 


POST     LIMINIUM 

NOTES   ON   WALTER   PATER 
I. — Mr.  Pater  upon  Plato* 

[The  Westminster  Gazette,  Mar.  2,  1893  5  The  Speaker,  Oct.  2S,  1S93.] 
"  Oh,  to  be  reading  Greats  at  B.N.C.  ! "  is  the  wish  spring- 
ing from  the  heart  of  a  Platonic  reader  fresh  from  the  study 
of  these  most  winning  lectures ;  lectures  full  of  a  golden 
wisdom,  full  of  a  golden  humour.  In  some  sort  they  are 
perfect  expressions  of  the  academic  spirit :  that  leisurely 
travel  of  the  mind  among  great  things,  under  a  wise  and 
persuasive  guidance,  which  Plato,  founder  of  the  Academy, 
loved  and  valued.  There  is  so  little  of  the  confident 
dogmatist,  with  iron  bonds  for  the  constraint  of  thought, 
in  this  lecturer ;  he  does  but  put  before  young  students,  the 
comrades  of  his  "  Emerald  Uthwart,"  his  vision  of  Plato, 
a  living  vision,  quick  with  the  colours  and  the  play  of  life. 
Unlike  so  many  Platonists,  Mr.  Pater  is  not  careful  to  find 
a  fully-formed  scheme  of  thought,  German  for  complete- 
ness, in  the  lively,  elusive,  variegated  thoughts  of  Plato. 
But  the  spirit  of  the  man  :  that  is  the  thing  for  him  !  Not 
that  he  would  "  unsphere  "  the  spirit  of  Plato,  reanimating 
the  dead  master,  in  any  dubious  restoration  of  his  uncon- 
jecturable  very  self;  that,  again,  he  abandons  to  a  German 
genius  of  ingenuity.      Rather,  Mr.  Pater  relies  upon  the 

*  "  Plato   and    Platonism  :  "    A    Series   of  Lectures.      By   Walter 
Pater.     (Macmillan.)     1893. 

B 


2  POST    LIMINIUM 

oldj  immortal,  and  familiar  writings  :    those  dialogues  in 
which  is  the  body,  no  less  than  the  soul,  of  Plato.  .  .  . 

"Truly  even  Plato  whosoever  well  considereth,  shall 
find  that  in  the  body  of  his  work,  though  the  inside  and 
strength  were  philosophy,  the  skin  as  it  were  and  beauty 
depended  most  of  poetry.  For  all  standeth  upon  dialogues ; 
wherein  he  feigneth  many  honest  burgesses  of  Athens  to 
speak  of  such  matters  that,  if  they  had  been  set  on  the 
rack,  they  would  never  have  confessed  them  ;  besides  his 
poetical  describing  the  circumstances  of  their  meetings,  as 
the  well-ordering  of  a  banquet,  the  delicacy  of  a  walk,  with 
interlacing  mere  tales,  as  Gyges'  ring  and  others,  which 
who  knoweth  not  to  be  flowers  of  poetry  did  never  walk 
into  Apollo's  garden."  Thus  Sir  Philip  Sidney  ;  and  thus 
Milton,  at  the  close  of  a  curiously  beautiful  poem  : — 
"  lam  iam  poetas  urbis  exules  lux 
Revocabis,  ipse  Tabulator  maximus, 
Aut  institutor  ipse  migrabis  foras." 

Plato  has  ever  been  accounted  a  spirit  of  flame  and  music, 
a  divine  poet.  Consider  but  his  followers,  in  their 
diverse  fashions  of  honouring  him.  There  are  the  Alexan- 
drian Platonists,  the  patristic  Platonists,  the  Florentine  and 
Renaissance  Platonists,  our  English,  Elizabethan  and  Cam- 
bridge Platonists.  It  matters  little  whom  you  choose, 
Plotinus  or  Augustine,  Pico  or  Bruno  or  Michael  Angelo, 
Spenser  or  Sidney,  or  Milton  or  More ;  later  yet,  Words- 
worth or  Shelley  :  in  each  of  these  you  discern  an  ardour 
of  the  intellect  kindled  at  the  fire  of  Plato,  rather  than  an 
anxious  and  deliberate  metaphysic.  It  is  otherwise  with 
Aristotle  :  the  schools  of  Pisa  and  Padua,  the  disciples  of 
Averroes  and  Aquinas,  exalted  him  to  a  height  from  which 
Bacon  was  fain  to  pull  him  down  ;  but  we  miss  the  rapture 
of  a  personal  love.  No  Italian  academy  kept  the  feast  of 
Aristotle,  as  the  Medicean  academy  kept  November  the 
thirteenth  in  honour  of  Plato,  their  classic  Moses,  almost 
their   Attic   Christ.     Coleridge  never  called  Aristotle  "a 


NOTES   ON    WALTER   PATER  3 

plank  from  the  wreck  of  Paradise,  cast  on  the  shores  of 
idolatrous  Greece."     Surveying  the  many  makers  or  poets 
of  ideal  states  and  perfect  cities,  it  is  not  the  Aristotelian 
politics,  but  the  Platonic  Republic,  that  we  find  inspiring 
their   dreams.     And  perhaps   the   divine   sagacity  of  the 
Catholic  Church  has  in  nothing  been  better  shown  than 
in  her  suspicion  of  Plato,  the  patron  of  such  fascinating 
heresies,  and  her  trust  in  Aristotle,  the  severe  and  dry.  .  .  . 
Once  more  Mr.  Pater  has  shown  us  how  fruitful  of  good 
things  is  this  visible  world,  with  its  garniture  and  furniture 
for  every  sense  :  how  a  Plato,  no  disembodied  ghost  of  the 
air,  but  a  breathing  man,  took  *'  sweet  counsel "  with  the 
world  of  sight,  and  used  the  eyes,  together  with  the  mind, 
of  an  artist.      It  is  as  though  he  bade  his  hearers,  in  their 
wonderful  Oxford,  look  upon  their  studies  of  philosophy  as 
of  a  piece  really  with  their  other  studies  by  field  or  river ; 
as  full  of  moving  dramatic  interest,  thriving  upon  all  kinds 
of  intimations  received  from  the  life  around  them.      Yet 
Plato  is  not  of  Cyrene  :   the  spiritual  master,  the  herald, 
some  have  said,  of  Saint  Augustine,  that  is  a  real  Plato  too. 
Just  where  and  how  does  Plato's  high  philosophy  join  hands 
with  his  delight  in  visible  life  ?    What  harmony  was  that  he 
would   effect   among  the  multitudinous   sounds,  the  many 
colours,  of  this  world  ?     Can  life  become  a  fair  service  of 
God,  by  any  disciplined  care  for  the  best  things  in  life,  the 
worthiest  and  the  finest  of  them  all  ?     "  Too  late  have  I 
loved   thee,  O  Beauty  so  ancient  and  so  new !     Too  late 
have  I  loved  thee."     That  was  the  cry  of  Augustine.     And, 
"  Too   late  have  I  known  thee,  O  true  Light !     Too  late 
have  I  known  thee."     There  is  no  such  outbreak  from  the 
soul  of  Plato ;   but,  from  the  first  a  lover,  he  also  passed 
into  a  knower  of  an  unoriginate  beauty  and  of  a  very  light. 
His  intuition  was  much  that  of  Augustine,  again  :    "  Thou 
hast  made  us  for  Thyself,  and  our  heart  hath  no  rest  until  it 
rest  in  Thee."     Mr.  Pater,  in  his  first  lectures,  traces  the 
growth  of  Plato's  mind  upon  these  matters.     The  "  ruinous 


4  POST    LIMINIUM 

lluidity "  of  the  Ionian,  Attic  temper,  its  "  centrifugal " 
motion,  its  multiform  activity, — these,  endangering  all  stable 
beauty  and  established  truth,  a  form  of  corruption  in  body  and 
soul,  in  State  and  family,  were  the  prevalent  evil  and  the 
potent  plague.  How  to  set  the  feet  upon  the  rock,  as  said 
his  "  cousin  at  Zion,"  was  Plato's  problem.  With  Heraclitus 
then,  that  "  flowing  philosopher,"  in  Berkeley's  phrase,  no 
terms  !  Under  the  shifting,  drifting  tides  of  change,  ever 
*'  becoming,"  never  "  being,"  there  must  be  a  law  of  unity 
and  rest.  Let  us  turn  to  "  our  father  Parmenides."  Yes  ! 
yes !  explains  the  Eleatic  father,  but  all  this  infinite 
motion  is  nothing,  is  not ;  that  which  is,  the  Eternal  One, 
let  us  cling  to  that,  and  shut  our  eyes,  true  mystics,  to  the 
vanishing  world  of  sense.  True  thought,  true  being  : 
opinion,  phenomena :  there  is  the  eternal  antithesis.  Cheer- 
less doctrine  :  and  Plato,  so  Mr.  Pater  exquisitely  describes 
him,  colours  it  and  breathes  life  into  it,  making  those 
realities  of  the  soul,  those  absolute  ideas,  well-nigh  divine 
persons,  before  merging  them  into  a  divine  unity.  Presently 
comes  Pythagoras,  most  romantic  of  philosophers,  bringing 
"  life  and  immortality  to  light."  Music  is  lord  and  king  : 
music,  proportion,  harmony,  the  virtue  of  number,  the  law 
of  numerical  relation,  so  inexplicable  yet  insuperable.  It 
lies  behind  experience  :  why,  then,  the  remembering  soul 
in  us  has  lain  there  too,  will  lie  ahead  of  it  also.  The  soul 
is  immortal,  and  passes  from  life  to  life.  With  this  sudden 
ray  of  light  begins  a  mystical  cosmogony,  a  spiritual 
geography ;  the  music  of  the  spheres,  the  celestial  places, 
the  lands  of  Plato's  myths  and  visions  flash  upon  him.  In 
the  doctrine,  example,  influence  of  Socrates,  Plato  touched 
solid  ground  again,  and  yet  found  a  starting-point  for  many 
a  "  hazardous  flight."  To  get  at  the  facts,  intellectual  and 
moral,  to  cease  from  logomachy,  to  begin  "  dialectic,"  to 
leave  off"  from  assumption  and  presumption,  to  "  follow  the 
argument "  whithersoever  it  goeth,  even  to  the  hemlock  in 
the  prison, — that  is  the  counsel  of  Socrates.     Ask  yourself 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    PATER  5 

about  yourself,  scrutinise  every  notion,  be  rigorous  and 
impartial,  honest  and  earnest ;  press  home  each  thought, 
test  well  each  word.  Do  you  come  against  a  blank  wall  ? 
Does  the  word  ring  hollow  and  false  ?  Back  again,  and 
begin  again.  Look  at  life,  this  busy,  workaday,  practical 
world  ;  appeal  to  experience.  Simple  and  sincere  in  this, 
though  with  plenty  of  rough  humour,  Socrates  was,  taught 
Plato  to  be,  a  philosopher,  and  not  a  sophist.  "  I  want  to 
make  you  anxious  about  your  souls,"  was  the  appeal  of 
Cardinal  Newman  to  his  hearers.  "  I  want  to  make  you 
interested  in  your  souls,"  was  the  appeal  of  Socrates.  "  I 
will  fit  you  for  success  in  life,  I  will  give  you  a  '  practical ' 
education,"  was  the  appeal  of  the  sophist.  It  was  the 
sophist's  irritable,  shifty,  tricky  training,  says  Mr.  Pater, 
that  Socrates  loathed.  Let  us  examine  every  question,  be 
subtle  and  versatile  in  argument ;  but,  for  the  truth's  sake, 
not  for  gain.  Don't  learn  to  doubt  away  all  things ;  but 
only  lies,  plausible  and  pestilent.  'And  Plato  himself,  all 
this  while,  what  is  he,  what  is  his  unique  and  proper  genius  ? 
In  a  powerful  and  a  beautiful  essay,  Mr.  Pater  discusses  the 
elements  of  his  genius  :  a  love  of  the  visible  world,  its  arts 
and  ways  and  looks,  the  instinct  of  "an  excellent  writer  of 
fiction,"  no  less  than  of  the  plastic  artist.  A  love  of  love, 
sensuous  certainly,  by  virtue,  or  vice,  of  a  passionate 
temperament ;  but  tempered  by  an  austere  love  of  temperance, 
restraint,  and  order.  The  dreamland  of  metaphysics,  so 
misty  and  foggy  at  times,  is  a  passionate  place  for  Plato  ; 
the  relation  of  things,  truth  to  truth,  thought  to  thought, 
image  to  image,  all  the  invisible  world,  often  so  bare  and 
grey,  is  for  him  a  home  almost  of  veritable  persons :  those 
"  ideas  "  almost  flash  and  quiver  into  personal  life,  at  the 
touch  of  his  passion.  His  style,  his  language,  is  alive  with 
imagery  caught  from  the  visible  world ;  and  his  lovers,  not 
always  wise,  have  been  something  too  apt  to  take  him, 
literally,  "  at  his  word."  In  ethics,  his  ultimate  aim,  as  in 
politics  also,  was  a  '^  faire  music  and  divine  concent,"  body 


6  POST   LIMINIUM 

obeying  soul :  press  that  obedience  home,  upon  all  sides, 
and  let  the  soul  rule  the  body  politic,  and  no  art  be  with  us 
but  what  is  soul-inspiring,  a  "  trumpet-call "  to  the  forces  of 
truth  and  righteousness.  Dorian  self-restraint,  the  "  laconic  " 
or  Spartan  habit : — that  is  to  be  our  rule  of  life,  half  "mon- 
astic," half  "  military,"  wholly  "  musical."  Our  *'  City  of  the 
Perfect "  is  to  keep  perfect  time  in  its  marches  and  in  its 
melodies ;  and  if  you  long  for  beauty  you  must  find  it  in 
that  rhythmically  ordered  life,  where  each  does  his  part  and 
all  are  fellows  one  with  another,  every  man  in  his  place. 
There  is  a  music  of  the  spheres,  and  one  star  differeth  from 
another  star  in  glory.  It  is,  if  you  consider  it,  a  scholar's 
vision  :  away  with  the  vulgarity  of  excess  !  And  a  saint's 
vision  :  away  with  the  iniquity  of  lawlessness  !  Take  law, 
order,  out  of  the  universe :  what  horror  of  what  a  chaos 
follows  but  the  thought  of  that !  Order,  music,  shall  reign  : 
a  fair  kingdom,  for  music  is  fair.  For  that  let  us  fight, 
aspiring  by  the  way  of  "  ideals,"  combating  with  the 
weapons  of  reason,  the  true  "  dialectic."  .... 

Said  Bentley  to  Pope,  upon  his  Homer  :  "  A  very  pretty 
poem,  but  you  must  not  call  it  Homer."  Certain  students, 
of  the  more  arid  and  literal  kind,  might  say  of  Mr.  Pater's 
book  :  "  A  very  pretty  philosophy,  but  you  must  not  call  it 
Plato.  This  or  that  point  is  neglected,  this  or  that  other  is 
magnified ;  a  metaphor  here  is  something  too  curious,  an 
analogy  there  fetched  from  over  far.  This  is  not  Plato, 
though  its  beauty  be  Platonic."  It  is  because  such  things 
may  be  said  and  in  part  justified  that  we  have  reminded 
readers  of  Plato  and  of  Mr.' Pater,  of  that  traditional  Platon- 
ism  which  is  not  a  system  of  philosophy,  but  an  inspiration 
of  life.  Consider,  too,  the  audience  which  listened  to  these 
lectures :  a  set  of  "  young  students  of  philosophy "  at 
Oxford.  How  excellent  a  thing  for  them,  tempted  perhaps 
to  look  upon  philosophy  as  hair-splitting,  a  verbal  juggle, 
that  they  should  have  their  Plato  at  least  presented  with  the 
secret  of  his  personality  suggested  to  them,  vitalised  for 


NOTES   ON   WALTER    PATER  7 

them,  by  a  writer  who  to  an  admirable  erudition  joins  just 
that  intuitive  sympathy  which  recreates,  reanimates,  the 
great  things  of  a  world  gone  by  !  Of  the  Platonic  "  ideas," 
those  difficult  and  seductive  "  ideas,"  Mr.  Pater  gives  them, 
as  it  were,  a  picture.  His  picture  may  not  be  wholly  right, 
but  whose  can  be  ?  And  Mr.  Pater's  will  at  least  stimulate, 
interest,  attract.  He  could,  doubtless,  so  place  in  winning 
lights  the  "  forms  "  of  Bacon,  the  "  vortices  "  of  Descartes, 
and  show  young  philosophers  how  dear,  how  moving,  those 
conceptions  were  to  their  first  conceivers :  they  would 
actually  see  Bacon,  see  Descartes,  brooding,  cogitating, 
interpreting  the  "  nature  of  things."  The  Lacedsemonians, 
again  :  how  salutary  a  corrective  to  Thucydides,  read  with- 
out emotion,  Mr.  Pater's  presentation  of  the  austere,  serene, 
Dorian  hill-folk  !  Just  so,  he  could  make  young  students 
of  Rome,  hasty  partisans  of  Senate  or  of  Caesar,  realise  the 
better,  finer  spirit  in  either  camp.  It  was  assuredly  not  in 
the  thought  that  Mills  to  be  and  future  Mansels  were  among 
his  hearers,  that  Mr.  Pater  composed  and  gave  his  lectures, 
but  in  the  wish  that  the  young  scholars,  face  to  face  with 
some  of  the  highest  things  in  history,  philosophies,  religions, 
arts,  should  find  a  living  soul  in  their  old  books,  not  anti- 
quarian dust ;  should  carry  away  with  them,  a  possession 
for  all  their  lives,  some  sense  of  that  ancient  world  once 
breathing,  active,  resolute,  even  as  themselves  to-day.  It 
is  in  the  very  spirit  of  that  cry,  "Things,  not  words,"  the 
cry  of  Erasmus,  Milton,  Rousseau,  and  a  thousand  more, 
that  Mr.  Pater  writes ;  he  is  in  perfect  touch  with  all  that  is 
best  in  our  modern  demands  for  educational  reform.  How 
shall  we  appreciate  the  Evangelical  Revival,  the  Catholic 
Revival,  knowing  nothing  of  Wesley  and  of  Newman  ?  But 
Plato, — what  do  we  know  of  Plato,  what  can  those  subtile 
dialogues  really  tell  us  of  the  man,  of  what  manner  he  was  ? 
Which  is  the  truer  Socrates,  he  of  Xenophon,  or  he  of  Plato  ? 
Well,  scholars  are  in  positions  of  trust :  v;e  confide  in  their 
honour.     Unless  scepticism  entire  is  to  be  our  word,  we 


8  POST   LIMINIUM 

must  trust  the  good  faith  of  our  trained  guides  :  a  Wolf,  a 
Mommsen,  may  fail  to  convince  us,  but  they  can  never  be 
quite  conquered,  never  be  proved  fools  or  knaves.  The 
very  errors  of  keen  and  accomplished  minds  are  valuable. 
Mr.  Pater,  in  all  his  writings,  has  displayed  certain  charac- 
teristics, interests,  "  propensions,"  which  his  readers  can  be 
at  no  loss  to  comprehend ;  they  know  in  what  ways,  under 
what  lights,  it  is  of  his  proper  genius  to  view  and  to  expound 
great  matters,  personalities,  periods.  The  concrete  appeals 
to  him,  the  soul  in  things  as  they  find  outward  form  and 
presence  ;  not  the  vague  and  vast,  the  colourless,  intangible, 
invisible,  inaudible,  but  aspirations  expressed  in  and  through 
written  words,  ideas  of  beauty  carried  out  by  actual  sub- 
stances, the  natures  of  men  legible  upon  their  persons  and 
circumstances.  "  Plato,"  he  seems  to  tell  his  audience, 
"  whom  you  know  in  the  vague,  a  magnificent  name,  appears 
to  me,  meditating  his  work  and  his  influence,  to  have  been 
a  man  of  this  nature,  of  this  sort :  see !  you  can  trace, 
surely,  a  love  of  this,  a  dislike  of  that,  in  these  passages ; 
here  he  has  somewhat  of  an  ascetic  air,  there  of  a  passionate 
spirit ;  Parmenides  now,  and  presently  Pythagoras,  work  on 
his  mind  ;  Laconian  ideals  approve  themselves  to  him  ;  his 
style  and  language  have  such  a  peculiarity,  such  a  genius, 
and  such  again  :  considering  it  all,  these  and  many  things 
beside,  the  man  appears  to  me  of  this  nature,  of  this  sort." 
Doubtless,  the  whole  conception  of  Plato  in  these  lectures, 
the  influence  upon  him  of  this  and  that  predecessor,  his 
attitude  towards  such-and-such  tendencies  of  contemporary 
thought  and  practice,  may  be  just  somewhat  visionary,  a 
work  of  art,  of  the  "  imaginative  reason,"  delighting  in  its 
own  adventures  and  conjectures ;  but  (and  here,  if  needed,  is 
Mr.  Pater's  ample  justification),  there  is  extant  no  study  of 
Plato,  no  German  treatise  or  monograph,  which  imposes 
itself  as  the  final  word  upon  the  great  theme.  Grote  is 
admirable,  the  Master  of  Balliol  is  admirable,  many  and 
many  a  writer,  scholiast,  textual  critic,  laborious  editor,  has 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    PATER  9 

been  admirable ;  yet,  as  Casaubon  said  in  the  Hall  of  the 
Sorbonne,  "What  have  they  settled?"      Certainly,  some 
things  have  been  conclusively  settled ;  but  not  Plato.     The 
splendid  hallucinations  of  Marsilius  Ficinus,  translating  and 
pondering  Plato,  are  of  more  value  than  many  an  arduous 
excursus  bristling  with  the  newest  intricacies  of  philology. 
But  all  this  seems  to  say  that  from  Mr.  Pater  we  may  expect 
beautiful  writing,  personal  views  most  alluring  and  interest- 
ing,  all    refinements    of    a    lively,    poetical   imagination, 
but  not  strict  scholarship,  not  the  disciplined  severity  of 
the  schools.     An  insult,  and  a  silly  insult,  that  would  be  ! 
Readers,  accustomed  by  long  experience   to  use   Marius 
for    a    text-book   exact,    precise,  rigorous,  well-warranted 
and  attested,  of  the  Antonine  age,  do  not  need  to  be  told 
that  Mr.  Pater  never  writes  without  his  facts  and  evidences. 
Never  can  we  say,  consulting  Apuleius,  whom  you  will,  that 
here  certainly  Mr.  Pater  has  exceeded  his  authority,  or 
missed   this   piece   of    characterisation,    or    criticism,    or 
warrant ;    rather,  remembering  his   memorable  pages,  we 
remember  also  the  old  classical  pages  where  his  witnesses 
and  warrants  may  be  found.     And  so,  encountering  now 
and    again    some    statement   or   opinion   in   Mr.    Pater's 
lectures  which  is  startling  and  novel,  at  first  we  may  ask. 
What  is  his  ground  here  ?     But,  examining  the  old  words 
of  the  old  writings,  we  ask,  startled  at  their  novelty  thus 
interpreted  :  Surely,  upon  the  face  of  it,  and  deeper  than 
the  surface,  this  is,  indeed,  what  was  meant  at  the  first? 
The  words  not  merely  will,  but  must,  bear  just  this  inter- 
pretation, compel  just  this  inference.     No  pedant  has  been 
at  work,  and  no  amateur.     That  in  which  Mr.  Pater  is  dis- 
tinguished from  most  of  his  fellow-Platonists  is  his  sense  of 
the  values  of  words.    Finding  in  Plato  an  artist  in  language 
such  as  philosophy  has  not  seen  again  (though  we  admit 
Berkeley  to   a  lower  place   in   his  company),   Mr.  Pater 
has  been  at  the  pains  to  note  the  minute  proprieties  of 
Plato's  style,  and,  so  doing,  to  bring  us  back  from  careless 


lO  POST   LIMINIUM 

generalisations  to  a  more  loyal  reverence  for  the  text  of  the 
greatest  prose  writer.  Unable  himself  to  write  at  random, 
Mr.  Pater  is  constantly  checking  our  impatience  or  neglect 
of  the  written  word,  the  word  chosen  with  so  deliberate  an 
artistic  reason.  .  .  . 

Assuredly  Mr.  Pater  has  the  adorning  touch,  but  it  is 
always  humour,  in  its  high  sense,  which  prompts  him ;  any- 
thing pathetic,  or  grave,  or  ardent,  things  human  and  moving 
to  men,  speak  to  him.  Throughout  his  writing  runs  a  kind 
curiosity  about  men  and  their  world,  now  deep  and  solemn, 
now  lighter  and  less  profoundly  felt :  something  of  Sir 
Thomas  Browne's  humanity.  Few  books  so  move  us  to 
kindly  thoughts  of  life,  so  wake  in  us  the  old  charities  and 
common  pieties  of  our  race,  as  the  books  of  this  writer, 
whose  name  is  sometimes  taken  in  vain  by  lovers  of  an 
absolutely  heartless  art.  .  .  .  We  must  not  stop  to  dwell 
upon  the  beauty  of  this  one ;  its  many  pieces  of  perfect 
narrative,  its  dexterous  passages  of  translation,  its  chastened 
and  retiring  scholarship.  The  lecture  on  Lacedsemon,  for 
example,  is  already,  without  delay,  a  loc%is  classicus.  All 
the  old  excellencies  are  here  :  the  structural  unity,  the 
minute  propriety  of  phrase,  the  rich  and  quiet  humour  play- 
ing over  it  all.  "  How  many  great  men,"  writes  Emerson 
of  Plato,  "  is  Nature  incessantly  sending  up  out  of  night,  to 
be  his  men, — Platonists  ! "  It  is  abundantly  true  ;  as  it  is, 
that  not  one  of  them  has  done  to  Plato  a  greater  service, 
with  as  great  a  modesty,  as  Mr.  Pater  has  done,  by  these 
lectures  "  to  some  young  students  of  philosophy."  .  .  . 

Archbishop  Trench  dwelt  upon  the  mournful  lesson  of 
degeneracy  in  the  meaning  of  words  :  if  we  call  Mr.  Pater 
a  humanist,  a  humanitarian,  it  is  in  the  most  gracious 
meaning  of  the  terms.  Those  who  listened  to  this  patient, 
winning  exposition  of  Plato  may  never  again  read  him  in 
all  their  lives,  but  he  will  always  be  to  them  far  more  than 
an  "academic"  name,  thanks  to  the  guide  with  whom  they 
walked  "in  Plato's  shade" 


NOTES    ON   WALTER    PATER  II 


II.~Mr.  Pater's  Humour 

[  The  Academy,  Jan.  l6,  1897.] 
A  LITTLE  ingathering  from  The  Guardian  of  nine  reviews  of 
Mr.  Pater,  though  privately  made  and  published,  appeals 
to  an  audience  not  greatly  fewer  in  number  than  the  honest 
lovers  of  that  still  obscure  great  man.  They  are  not  his 
honest,  or  at  the  least  his  fortunate,  lovers  who  praise  but 
his  grave  beauty,  passionate  scholarship,  elect  restraint,  and 
who  read  his  measured  sentences  with  only  a  devout  or 
careful  "  recollection."  Such  solemnity,  brought  by  some 
to  an  owlish  perfection,  is  most  needless  and  inappropriate: 
it  is  not  the  right  way  to  read  an  humorist.  Mr.  Pater 
ceaselessly,  as  it  were,  pontificating  ;  stiff  and  stately  in  his 
jewelled  vestments  ;  moving  with  serious  and  slow  exactitude 
through  the  ritual  of  his  style  : — that  is  a  Mr.  Pater  of  the 
uneasy  reader,  to  whom  his  rich  humanity  seems  but  a 
laborious  humanism.  That  reader  cannot  catch  the  wise 
laughter  rippling  so  pleasantly  beneath  the  studied  phrases ; 
he  is  blind  to  the  quiet  smile,  sometimes  innocently 
malin,  which  lies  as  a  charm  upon  the  ordered  utterance. 
Humour  that  is  gentle  in  its  strength,  humour  rooted  in 
philosophy,  humour  gravely  glad  and  gleaming,  has  not  the 
popular  chances  of  humour  militant  and  pranksome,  a  thing 
that  jerks  surprisingly  on  wires.  A  great  saint  is,  of 
necessity,  a  great  humorist,  since,  like  his  Maker,  he 
"  knows  whereof  we  are  made  "  :  so  too  are  the  princes  of 
poetry  and  philosophy,  and  thus  we  are  sad  at  thinking 
that  Milton  and  Mill  were  both  without  one  part  of  their 
birthright.  "  Has  God  a  sense  of  humour  ?  Can  He 
laugh?"  asked  a  correspondent  of  Kingsley.  "Yes!" 
came  the  answer :  "  because  God  has  all  perfections  in 
perfection."  Celestial  humour,  joyous  and  radiant  and 
undoubting,  is  an  obvious  attribute  of  Omnipotent  Omni- 
science, both  in  Itself,  and  as  It  contemplates  free  will  in 


12  POST    LIMINIUM 

man  ;  so,  if  \vc  go  to  authority,  have  Shakspere  and  Heine 
told  us.  And  in  proportion  to  a  man's  reach  and  range  of 
vision  is  his  share  in  the  divine  humour,  his  appreciation  of 
•'  Things  in  Themselves,"  to  quote  Kant,  of  "  Things  as 
They  Are,"  to  quote  Mr.  Kipling.  A  heroic  sense  of 
sorrow,  the  very  profundity  of  melancholy,  are  not  incon- 
gruous with  the  very  clarity  of  humour  :  only  the  narrow 
and  the  sour  look  askance  at  the  sound  of  the  wise  laughter. 
And  there  are  some  to  whom  from  early  boyhood  Mr. 
Pater,  then  the  author  of  one  book,  gave  an  exhilaration 
which  it  were  priggish  to  call  intellectual  merely,  but  which 
rippled  into  laughter  the  growing  intellect. 

Let  us  have  done  with  the  fabled  Mr.  Pater  of  a  strict 
and  strait  solemnity,  that  travesty  false  and  foolish  !  Flesh 
and  blood,  life  multiform  and  variegated,  things  charged  and 
eloquent  with  humane  emotion,  a  world  starred  with  points 
of  interest  and  concern, — among  that  moved  the  loving  and 
patient  genius  of  the  man.  Moved,  obeying  laws  of  art : 
so  absolute  and  imperative  was  the  obedience,  that  it 
seemed  to  many  the  one  great  thing  of  note.  Each  single 
word  deliberately  chosen  !  never  one  harmless  laxity  ! 
always  a  passion  of  precision  !  And  it  was  inferred  thence 
that  Mr.  Pater  was  a  votarist  of  style  for  its  own  exacting 
sake,  and  not  by  reason  of  the  reverent  value  that  he  set 
upon  his  matter,  upon  the  humanities  that  were  his  reverent 
theme.  Yet  he  was  instinct  with  veritable  fun,  and  wrote 
with  quiet  mirth  as  he  elaborated  his  sense  of  life's 
meanings  and  contents.  Never  a  sentimentalist,  he  is 
never  found  pluming  himself  upon  his  pathos  or  his 
humour  :  the  notes  are  never  forced.  But  his  descriptions 
of  things  gone,  old  philosophy  or  old  furniture,  are  steeped 
in  a  peaceful  irony  :  his  tales  of  young  ambitions  now  in 
ashes,  of  ardent  ideals  laid  in  dust,  have  touches  of  Horace 
and  of  h.  Kempis,  of  Pascal  and  of  Montaigne.  Loving- 
kindness,  which  cares  for  the  vast  world's  dead,  for  the  live 
world's  "  little  ones,"  for  what  moves  or   has  moved   the 


NOTES  ON  WALIKK  PATER 


13 


affections  of  men, — he  possessed  that  loving-kindness  in  its 
plenitude.  Maudlin  tears  were  far  from  his  eyes,  facile 
laughter  from  his  lips :  his  "  humours "  were  philosophic 
and  natural,  like  those  of  Mr.  Patmore  and  Mr.  Meredith. 
But  they  are  direct  creators  :  he  an  indirect.  So,  many 
have  read  him  with  the  loins  girt,  the  brows  knit,  because 
he  is  a  scholar,  a  critic,  a  humanist,  an  academic :  when 
they  fall  upon  a  positive  and  patent  jest,  it  disturbs  them  : 
this  is  levity,  Mr.  Pater  forgets  himself !  They  have  been 
deaf  and  blind  to  the  winning  insinuations  of  a  delicious 
pleasantry  upon  every  page  :  they  would  be  horrified  with 
much  amazement,  to  learn  that  some  readers,  in  some 
moods,  waver  long  between  the  election  of  Lamb  or  of  Mr. 
Pater  for  a  winter  night's  companion.  But  truth  involves 
delight  :  it  is  so  universally.  And  both  Lamb  and  Mr. 
Pater  were  solicitous  for  the  expression  of  truth,  not  in  its 
nakedness,  but  in  its  felicity :  so  that  many  of  their  perfect 
sentences  communicate  a  thrill  of  consentient  joy.  To 
masters  of  the  whimsical  or  the  fantastic,  our  startled 
admiration  may  cry  Wonderful !  To  masters  of  the  truth 
in  its  beauty,  we  give  a  simple  Yes  !  of  personal  thanks, 
with  a  glow  at  the  heart  and  eyes.  "  Sudden  Glory,"  says 
Hobbes,  "  is  the  passion  which  maketh  those  Grimaces 
called  Laughter."  Hobbes  meant  that  somewhat  severely, 
and  for  a  reproach :  but  it  is  an  exquisite  account  of  the 
nobler  laughters,  those  of  perceptive  joy.  To  find  the 
intrinsic  value  of  Webster  the  tragedian,  or  of  Marcus 
Aurelius  the  tragic,  perfectly  estimated  and  set  down, 
raises  a  "  sudden  glory  "  in  the  reader,  a  joy  which  laughs 
at  the  perfect  capture  oi  a  truth,  the  perfect  triumph  of  the 
truth  :  and  the  reader  knows  that  the  writer  of  the  royal 
sentences  had  his  "  sudden  glory  "  also,  the  joy  of  having 
created  what  is  "  very  good."  Most  of  us  view  art  and  all 
intellectual  products  with  far  too  awed  a  seriousness :  we 
cannot  take  them  radiantly ;  we  shrink  from  gaiety  in  high 
places,  we  check  the  incipient   smiles.     Humour  in   the 


14  POST   LIMINIUM 

*'  hieratic  "  Mr.  Pater  !  It  seems  a  sacrilegious  thought. 
But  the  humour  is  there,  there  in  profluent  abundance,  as 
it  is  in  Plato  and  in  Berkeley.  .  .  . 

Distinction  could  not  fail  to  wait  upon  Mr.  Pater's 
lightest  word  and  work :  distinction,  which  means  an 
exquisite  nicety  of  carriage,  at  once  natural  and  culti- 
vated, equal  to  all  occasions  and  never  doffed.  For  he 
respected  the  universe,  and  neither  optimists  nor  pessi- 
mists do  that.  He  felt  himself  to  be  moving  among 
mystery  and  beauty,  things  exceeding  great.  He  spent 
his  life  in  realising  how  his  fellow-men  of  the  past  and  of 
his  day  behaved  themselves  under  those  conditions,  what 
potencies  and  possibilities  were  theirs  :  he  was  clear  of 
flippancy  and  of  pedantry.  Confronted  with  the  world's 
"  magnalities,"  or  with  its  ephemeral  littleness,  his  heart 
burned  within  him,  and  his  fine  spirit  was  finely  touched. 
Of  great  men  only  can  that  be  often  said,  and  of  good  men, 
whose  greatness  is  to  be  good  and  unknown. 

III. — Mr.  Pater  and  his  Public 

\The  Academy^  Oct.  13,  1900.] 
Shortly  after  Mr.  Pater's  sudden  death  it  was  the  present 
writer's  bitter-sweet  privilege  to  examine  much  of  his  un- 
published and  unfinished  MSS. :  fragments  of  rich  treasure 
were  there,  unfulfilled  promises  to  us  of  fresh  delight  in  the 
perfected  achievements  of  his  lovingly  laborious  art.  It  had 
been  less  sad  to  have  seen  nothing;  to  have  been  un- 
tantalised,  unprovoked,  by  the  revelation  of  what  might  have 
been  but  for  that  swift  intervention  of  death.  Fifty-five 
years  of  life,  some  thirty  of  literary  labour :  it  affords  room 
for  production  in  goodly  quantity  when,  as  in  this  case, 
there  are  also  leisure,  felicitous  circumstances,  scant 
hindrance  from  the  pressure  of  the  world.  Yet  Mr.  Pater 
published  but  five  works.  Since  his  death  there  have  been 
published  three  volumes,  or,  if  we  take  note  of  a  privately 


NOTES    ON   WALTER    PATER  1 5 

printed  little  volume,  four.  Only  one  of  his  works  is  of  any 
considerable  length,  designed  upon  an  elaborate  scale. 
Gaston  de  Lafonr,  which  would  have  been,  in  that  and  other 
respects,  a  companion  of  Marius  the  Epicureati,  is  a 
fragment.  To  the  reckoners  by  quantity  this  does  not 
seem  a  notable  tale  of  work  achieved,  designs  accomplished. 
True :  but  to  the  worker  himself,  in  the  first  place,  and 
secondarily  to  all  who  knew  him,  it  represented  as  great  an 
amount  of  intellectual  and  emotional  toil  and  pains  as  those 
thirty  years  could  contain.  The  fruits  of  them  are  presently 
to  be  offered  to  us  in  an  especial  form  of  honour,  in  an 
editmi  de  bixe. 

Certainly,  if  jealous  vigilance  on  behalf  of  artistic  purity, 
and  the  utmost  strenuousness  of  aesthetic  self-examination, 
ever  had  their  consequence  in  work  worthy  of  distinguished 
honour,  Mr.  Pater's  work  is  the  consequence  of  those 
disciplinary  virtues.  The  edition  will  present  its  possessors 
with  nothing  of  "happy  negligence,"  easy  inaccuracy, 
blemishes  of  haste  or  indifference  or  ignorance  or  sloth. 
The  athlete,  whether  of  Greek  games  or  of  philosophic 
study,  or  of  religious  passion,  or  of  artistic  devotion,  was 
ever  an  image  dear  to  Mr.  Pater ;  asceticism,  in  its  literal 
and  widest  sense,  the  pruning  away  ot  superfluities,  the  just 
development  or  training  of  essentials,  the  duty  of  absolute 
discipline,  appealed  to  him  as  a  thing  of  price  in  this  very 
various  world.  He  wrote  with  certain  literary  virtues,  in 
what  theology  calls  the  "  heroic  degree  "  of  virtue,  and  was 
obedient  to  "  counsels  of  perfection  " :  the  right  word  for 
the  right  thought,  the  exact  presentation  of  the  exact 
conception,  matter  and  manner  "  kissing  each  other "  in 
complete  accord,  and  truth  throughout  prevailing.  With 
what  austere  patience,  what  endurance  of  delay,  he  wrought 
for  that,  content  with  nothing  less,  even  physically  hurt  and 
vexed  by  less  !  To  disentangle  good  from  evil  in  the 
conduct  of  life,  to  be  a  master  of  honest  casuistry  in  the 
matter  of  moral  right  and  wrong,  tasks  the  holiest  of  men 


1 6  POST    LIMINIUM 

hardly;  and  Mr.  Pater,  beyond  most  writers  of  his  time, 
felt  the  hardness  of  the  kindred  task  in  art.  Clearness  of 
vision,  integrity  of  thought,  he  held  difficult  of  attainment, 
exacting  ideals.  We  find  him  always  striving  to  disintegrate, 
to  set  free,  in  dealing  with  an  age  or  a  temperament  or  a 
work  of  art,  that  soul  of  value  which  makes  it  what  it  is, 
makes  it  important,  considerable,  vital.  Others  might 
think  themselves  "  born  free  "  of  the  kingdom  of  art ;  with 
"  a  great  sum,"  at  a  great  expense  of  the  spirit,  distrustful  of 
light  first  impressions,  Mr.  Pater  acquired  his  freedom ;  and 
so,  little  modern  writing  is  so  remarkable  for  its  air  of 
finality.  His  reader  may  dissent,  but  can  never  doubt  that 
Mr.  Pater  has  expressed  what,  for  himself  at  least,  is  the 
last  truth,  or  a  part  of  the  last  truth,  about  Wordsworth  or 
BotticelU  or  Lamb  or  Plato ;  never  doubt  that  every 
sentence,  in  its  every  phrase  and  word,  represents  a 
profound  quest  after  exactitude,  and  had  its  discarded 
predecessors.  Had  he,  as  the  saying  goes,  had  "  nothing 
to  say,"  such  intensity  of  workmanship  would  have  perforce 
been  ranked  beside  the  foolish  and  vain  kinds  of 
Alexandrianism,  Ciceronianism,  Euphuism.  Having  had 
much  to  say,  his  zealous  resolve  to  say  it  in  a  form  of 
ultimate  precision  did  but  mean  that,  to  his  mind,  anything 
short  of  entire  correspondence  between  the  things  to  be 
said  and  the  mode  of  saying  them  was  an  injury  and  an 
insult  to  those  things.  To  any  readers,  should  any  still 
exist,  who  conceive  of  Mr.  Pater  as  primarily  an  artificer  in 
words,  let  us  commend  the  consideration  of  this  fact :  that 
wherever  a  sentence  or  a  paragraph  fails  in  part  to  please, 
it  is  never  through  an  affectation  in  language,  some  excess 
of  curiousness  and  strangeness  in  the  use  of  words,  but 
always  through  a  too  great  compression  of  meaning, 
assemblage  of  ideas.  We  do  not  claim  perfection  for  Mr. 
Pater ;  but  when  we  seem  to  take  less  than  our  customary 
delight  in  some  page  of  his  writings,  it  is  because  the  man 
with  much  to  say  has  been  too  much  for  the  man  who  says 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    PATER  17 

it.  Wealth  of  thoughts,  not  of  words,  is  to  blame  for  any 
falling  away  from  lucid  grace  in  Mr.  Pater ;  and  such  falling 
away  is  very  exceptional  and  rare.  Perfect  correspondence 
between  conception  and  expression  was  ever  his  aim,  and 
miraculously  well  he  was  wont  to  find  it :  it  was  what  he 
prized   above  all   artistic  excellences  of  a  wayward   and 

casual  character 

FitzGerald,  writing  to  an  American  friend,  confesses 
more  than  once  that  he  cannot  appreciate  Hawthorne, 
cannot  take  to  him  comfortably,  though  he  feels  that 
Hawthorne  is  a  writer  of  distinction.  These  repugnances, 
or,  in  milder  phrase,  ineffectual  attempts  at  admiration  and 
enjoyment,  are  matters  of  temperament.  We  can  drill  and 
school  ourselves  into  respect  for  a  writer,  seldom  into 
genuine  pleasure  in  his  writings.  Mr.  Pater  brought  to 
bear  upon  his  large  scholarship  and  various  culture  a 
personality  of  exceeding  distinction,  an  individuality  most 
marked.  His  works  have  plenty  of  pathos,  plenty  of 
humour,  an  abundance  of  human  sympathies ;  he  can  dwell 
upon  "little"  common  things  with  no  less  pleasure  than 
upon  the  Roman  Cathohc  Church  or  the  genius  of  Michael 
Angelo.  It  is  wholly  a  misconception  to  conceive  of  him 
as  confined  to  the  chambers  and  precincts  of  a  palace  of 
art,  shudderingly  averse  from  the  spectacle  or  the  intrusion 
of  the  '^  vulgar "  world.  Yet,  if  his  inevitable  mode  of 
presenting  life  and  thought  distress  you,  if  his  style,  which 
is  himself,  displease  you,  you  will  with  difficulty  see  the  rich 
appreciation  of  life  in  his  books,  his  faculty  of  intimacy 
with  the  ways  of  life  and  feeling  among  many  various 
vanished  generations  of  men.  We  speak  of  wTiters  who 
make  an  "  universal  appeal."  The  phrase  is  very  question- 
able, even  when  applied  to  Homer,  Shakspere,  the  Bible, 
to  Rabelais  or  Cervantes.  And  assuredly  it  is  no  reproach 
to  any  writer  that  he  is  not,  probably  will  never  be,  widely 
popular.  Messrs.  Macmillan's  edition  de  luxe  of  Mr.  Pater 
is  to  consist  of  less  than  a  thousand  copies :  that  number, 

c 


l8  POST   LIMINIUM 

for  certain,  does  not  profess  to  represent  the  number  of 
those  who  honestly  delight  in  him,  of  those  to  whom  his 
genius  is  a  friend,  and  full  of  charm.  But,  if  it  did,  were 
that  anything  against  him  ?  To  court  obscurity  by  wilfulness 
is  not  the  same  thing  as  to  accept  it  upon  the  dictates  of 
conscience,  by  obeying  the  daimon  within  you  and 
"  hearkening  what  the  inner  spirit  sings."  Mr.  Pater  kept 
the  laws  of  his  literary  conscience  as  the  monk  keeps  the 
rules  of  his  order :  their  rigour  was  often  burdensome,  but 
relaxation  would  have  been  treason.  They  limited  his 
productiveness  and  the  number  of  his  readers,  but  they 
were  imperative ;  self-dedicated  to  his  art,  he  accepted  its 
limitations.  If  he  died  "  leaving  great "  prose  "  unto  a 
little  clan  "  of  appreciators,  "  a  little  clan  "  sure  of  increase 
and  of  successors,  satis  est,  for  him  as  for  them.  "  It  is  not 
to  be  thought  of"  that  Marius  and  Sebastian  van  Storck, 
and  Duke  Carl  and  Denys  of  Auxerre  and  Emerald 
Uthwart,  should  fade  from  sight  with  all  their  plenitude  of 
bright  wistful  youth ;  that  the  portraits  of  Ronsard  and 
Montaigne,  Marcus  Aurelius  and  the  Christians  of  Rome, 
should  lose  their  poignancy  and  fascination.  None  will 
surpass  in  nobility  of  interpretation  those  lectures  upon 
Plato  and  Platonism  given  at  Oxford ;  iQ.\!  will  with  greater 
subtlety  of  skill  pluck  out  the  heart  of  the  secret  than  he 
who  explored  and  expounded  the  secret  of  Coleridge,  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  Winckelmann,  Giorgione.  Courtliness, 
suavity,  an  elegant  severity,  an  excellent  persuasiveness,  are 
qualities  making  for  life  in  literature ;  they  are  preservatives 
against  decay,  a  "  savoursome"  salt.  And  Mr.  Pater  could 
be,  in  a  peculiar  and  characteristic  way,  almost  homely  also, 
with  little  confidences  and  asides  to  his  reader.  Many 
pages,  to  some  honoured  with  his  friendship,  recall  the 
gravely  measured  voice,  in  which  there  was  often  an  under- 
tone of  quiet  humour,  gentle  irony,  delightful  and  bland. 
Learned  as  he  was,  he  wore  his  learning  lightly.  It  is 
possible  to  read  Marius  over  and  over  again,  and  at  each 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    PATER  1 9 

reading  to  discover  some  fresh  proof  of  those  toils  and 
studies  whence  sprang  the  book,  but  which  were  carefully 
bidden  to  conceal  themselves.  If  there  be  weight  in  all  his 
writings,  there  is  no  touch  of  pedantry;  that  was  as  far 
from  him  as  slovenliness  and  flippancy.  He  will  live, 
indeed,  by  virtue  of  much  else,  but  in  great  measure  by 
virtue  of  the  lovableness,  the  winning  personality,  of  his 
gracious  writings.  There  is  a  sedulous  avoidance  of  "  I " 
in  them,  yet  they  have  some  spiritual  affinity  with  Montaigne 
and  Lamb.  They  will  live,  "  if  precious  be  the  soul  of 
man  to  man."  Their  edition  de  luxe  will  prove  no  sumptuous 
casket  enshrining  fine  gold  waxen  dim,  scentless  spices,  and 
treasure  turned  to  dust. 


IV.— The  Work  of  Mr.  Pater 

\Fortnightly  Review,  September,  1S94.] 
The  loss  to  the  ranks  of  English  writers  through  Mr.  Pater's 
death  is  a  loss  something  like  that  suffered  at  the  death  of 
Rossetti  or  of  Arnold.  Most  writers  who  die  deserving,  or 
possessing,  less  than  a  magnificent  fame,  leave  colleagues 
behind  them,  and  are  sure  of  successors :  they  are  neither 
incomparable  nor  irreplaceable.  But  there  are  in  almost 
every  generation  two  or  three  men  of  the  fine  arts,  whom 
a  discreet  judgment  may  not,  or  dares  not,  class  with  the 
greatest ;  yet  from  whom  it  cannot  withhold  the  praises  due 
to  genius  of  a  resolute  and  rare  distinction.  It  is  their 
common  fate  to  be  loved  by  their  wise  lovers  more  honestly 
and  more  intimately  than  are  some  greater  men ;  and  to 
be  placed  by  their  foolish  lovers  among  the  greater,  or  above. 
The  mere  thought  that  this  poet  and  that  painter  have  won 
no  vast  applause  beguiles  their  votaries  into  acts  of  private 
canonisation,  not  without  a  certain  pride  in  the  enjoyment 
of  so  special  and  refined  a  worship.  But  Mr.  Pater,  at 
least,  is  an  artist,  a  scholar,  most  properly  approached  in  a 


20  rOST    LI.MK.'IUM 

spirit  of  aversion  from  all  extremes.    He  was  ever  intolerant 
of  haste  and  heat. 

In  more  than  twenty  academic  years,  of  which  the  public 
duties  harmonised  with  the  private  pursuits,  Mr.  Pater 
finished  five  books.  They  consist  of  twenty  essays,  ten 
lectures,  four  brief  imaginative  studies,  and  one  of  an 
ampler  range.  His  uncollected  writings,  in  each  kind, 
would  fill  scarce  more  than  two  volumes.  And  the  secret 
of  so  sparing  and  fastidious  a  production  may  be  found  in 
the  famous  lines  of  Gautier : — 

"  Oui,  I'oeuvre  sort  plus  belle 
D'une  forme  au  travail 

Rebelle, 
Vers,  marbre,  onyx,  email." 

Verse,  yes  !  that  is  obvious ;  but  what,  in  modern  England, 
ol prose  1  Assuredly,  we  have  had  prose  artfully  simple  and 
prose  defiantly  forcible  :  we  have  had,  to  take  but  those,  the 
admirable  varieties  of  Newman  and  Carlyle.  And  fanciful 
prose  has  abounded,  flowery,  picturesque,  emulous  of  poetry  ; 
emhlema  vcrmiculaium,  intricate  mosaic  -  work  in  words. 
But  most  of  our  writers  have  written  prose,  as  M.  Jourdain 
spoke  it,  unconsciously.  Verse,  indeed,  so  they  seem  to 
say,  comes  by  divine  grace  assisting  infinite  effort ;  but 
prose  is  an  universal  gift  of  nature.  That  was  not  Mr. 
Pater's  creed,  nor  has  it  been  the  creed  of  the  masters  ; 
and  he  set  himself,  with  a  passion  for  the  pains  of  art,  to 
work  in  a  prose  which  should  be  completely  faithful  to  his 
conception  of  that  art's  capacities;  and,  necessarily,  in  a 
prose  of  which  the  style  should  be  congruous  and  at  one 
with  the  thought  committed  to  it. 

At  the  outset,  it  is  clear  that  we  have  here  an  artist  of 
the  severest  kind,  one  enamoured  of  patient  waiting  upon 
perfection,  and  content  with  any  toil  so  he  may  attain  it  : 
and  perfection  is  not  popular,  unless  in  works  of  an  unexact- 
ing  character.  Persistence  in  perfection,  a  vigilance  never 
relaxed,  an  ascetic  austerity  of  carefulness,  cannot  fail  to 


NOTES   ON   WALTER    PATER  21 

vex  many :  the  puritan  and  precisian  of  art  can  become  no 
less  irksome  than  his  fellow  in  life.  To  all  of  us  at  times,  to 
some  of  us  always,  there  comes  a  sense  of  oppression  from 
the  sustained  grandeur  of  perfection  in  Michael  Angelo  or 
in  Milton.  A  caprice  born  of  revolt  against  restraint,  some 
little  flagging  or  failing  through  weariness,  would  give  relief. 
Apollo  with  his  bow  ever  bent !  Homer  not  suffered  to 
nod !  The  wisdom  of  the  world  has  pronounced  against 
that.  Even  epicures  in  artistic  taste  sometimes,  like  the 
youth  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  invention,  "  rather  ;like  bad 
wine;  one  gets  so  bored  with  good  wine."  But  there  is 
not  one  page  in  Mr.  Pater's  writings  on  which  the  most 
trivial  carelessness  can  be  detected.  Think  what  the  reader 
may  of  the  beauty,  or  the  power,  or  of  the  lack  of  them, 
in  this  sentence  or  in  that,  he  recognises  the  predetermina- 
tion which  has  set  each  word  in  its  place,  precisely  as  he 
finds  it.  Raphael,  true  scholar  that  he  was,  seems  always, 
writes  Mr.  Pater,  to  be  saying  :  "  I  am  utterly  purposed  that 
I  will  not  offend."  It  is  equally  so  with  himself.  But  there 
must  always  be  a  class  of  readers  to  whom  the  acts  of 
"  recollection  "  and  of  "  attention  "  (in  the  spiritual  sense), 
necessary  for  the  enjoyment  of  his  work,  are  a  bodily 
distress ;  and  in  this,  as  in  much  else,  he  resembles  the 
laborious  and  enduring  Flaubert. 

Since  the  dramatic  instinct  is  always  strong,  even  when 
the  drama  itself  is  feeble,  it  is  curious  to  note  the  ways  in 
which  that  instinct  insists  upon  finding  satisfaction. 
Carlyle  takes  dramatic  history  ;  Landor,  dramatic  dialogue ; 
Browning,  dramatic  monologue.  Mr.  Pater  took  criticism, 
and  from  his  effective  hands  it  issued  with  the  charm  of 
profoundly  imaginative  thought,  clothed  in  language  of  a 
triumphant  nicety  :  language  which  has  in  it  this  at  least 
of  the  master,  that  it  is  inimitable,  alive  with  felicities  that 
die  in  another  setting.  For,  lover  of  words  that  he  was, 
of  words  for  their  soul's  sake,  he  sought  out  an  exact  corre- 
spondence between  the  word  and  the  thing ;  valuing  truth 


22  POST    LIMINIUM 

of  expression  to  the  utmost,  and  confident  that  such  truth, 
really  found,  would  convey  with  it  a  reasonable  beauty.  His 
desire  was  to  ascertain,  through  a  solicitous  expense  of 
pondering,  just  how  things,  works  of  art,  or  periods  of  time, 
or  modes  of  thought,  or  ways  of  life,  looked  to  him  ;  he 
disencumbered  them  from  their  superfluities,  and  obtained 
an  ultimate  vision  of  them,  before  the  mind's  eye,  clear  and 
clean.  He  held  that  it  was  the  virtue  of  criticism  to  purge 
away  the  cloudiness  of  sight  which  makes  us  apprehend 
things  in  a  twilight  or  a  mist ;  to  discern  them  in  their  true 
proportions  and  values,  not  in  the  confused  obscurity  of 
a  general  impression ;  and  he  waited  for  this  illumination 
patiently,  discovering,  little  by  little,  the  truth  of  his  theme, 
as  memory  recaptures,  bit  by  bit,  the  very  fact  for  which 
it  explores  the  past.  And  so,  to  the  picture,  the  countryside, 
the  man,  the  theory,  to  whatever  be  his  theme,  seems  added 
his  vision  of  it,  as  something  no  less  real  than  itself;  his 
readers  remember  his  criticisms,  as  they  remember  works 
of  the  arts  avowedly  creative,  with  a  like  dramatic  vividness. 
His  thoughts  come  to  us,  as  it  were,  in  an  embodied  form 
and  substance,  with  clear  colour  and  definite  outline;  like 
the  ideas  of  Plato,  ever  tending  towards  a  personality.  As 
vague  religious  emotions  to  theology,  so  are  most  critical 
sentiments  of  our  day  to  his  criticism, — uncrystallized,  un- 
certain, undefined ;  in  a  waste,  or,  if  you  will,  a  garden  of 
pretty  words  and  fancies,  you  wander  without  aim  or  end ; 
or  you  listen,  at  another  time,  to  an  uninspired  exposition 
of  worthy  commonplace.  But  in  reading  Mr.  Pater  there 
is  felt  that  joyous  sense  of  the  need  for  discipline  and 
exercise  of  mind  which  good  writers  demand  of  us  :  the 
sense  that  here  are  beauty-  and  charm  and  strength  which 
have  not  come  at  random  and  without  pains,  but  are  the 
fruits  of  deliberate  labour.  "We  feel  it,  not  through  any  sign 
of  strain  in  the  finished  work,  but  through  that  prevailing 
air  of  mastery  over  hard  materials,  of  compliance  with 
arduous  conditions,  which  are  among  the  best  delights  of 


NOTES   ON    WALTER   PATER  23 

good  writers  and  of  understanding  readers.  Victory 
exhilarates.  From  his  first  essay,  down  to  the  praise  of 
Dorian  discipline  in  his  last  book,  Mr.  Pater  loved  the 
travail  of  the  soul  in  art;  his  was  something  of  the  priest's, 
the  soldier's,  abiding  consciousness  of  law  and  limitation  in 
their  lives  ;  orderliness,  precision,  ritual  rigour,  were  dear 
to  him ;  and  to  the  strictness  of  artistic  duty  he  gave  the 
obedience  of  one  under  the  salutary  command  of  a  superior. 
His  care  was  for  the  magnalia  7?iundi,  and  the  mirabilia  ; 
he  might,  with  Keats,  have  grouped  together  "  sun,  moon, 
and  stars,  and  passages  of  Shakspere."  But  he  had  no 
simply  conventional  feeling  towards  the  great  ages  or  the 
great  arts,  and  towards  the  makers  of  their  greatness ; 
rather,  he  loved  to  be  at  home  among  them,  with  the 
intimacy  of  a  friend  who  knows  more  about  the  things  and 
persons  of  his  love  than  their  obvious  features.  The 
Renaissance  of  Italy  and  France,  the  Antonine  age, 
moments  in  the  history  of  the  Church  or  of  philosophy , 
times  of  some  unique  appeal  to  him  through  their  arts  and 
ways ; — these  he  studied  until  the  first  moving  fascination  of 
them  passed  into  a  personal  sympathy.  But  while  he  was 
eminently  a  scholar,  an  academic,  incapable  of  neglecting 
erudition  and  research,  patient  of  long  and  tedious  labour, 
yet  he  could  never  rest  there  :  he  must  always  clothe  the 
dry  bones  with  flesh.  So  he  chose,  or  he  created,  men  in 
whom  the  age,  the  art,  the  life  of  his  theme  should  live  and 
move,  quickening  it  with  humanity,  animating  it  with  a 
sensible  joy  or  sorrow  through  the  powers  of  pathos  and 
of  humour,  the  appeals  of  mortality  which  Virgil  found  so 
touching.  His  genius  was  happiest  in  this.  With  a  kind 
of  unconscious  audacity,  the  living  energy  of  his  scholarship 
took  him  to  the  side  of  the  long  dead,  and  he  understood 
them  and  lived  their  lives ;  or  it  set  beside  them  a  figure 
of  his  own  creation,  yet  one  of  themselves.  No  one  knew 
better  than  he  that  these  creations  and  re-creations  were 
*'  imaginary  portraits,"  all  of  them.      Prolonged  study  of 


24  rOST   LIMINIUM 

the  past,  through  visitation  of  its  homes  and  acquaintance 
with  its  works,  makes  no  present  contemporary  with  any 
past ;  the  widest  learning  and  the  truest  love  result  in  but 
a  guess  at  truth,  a  dream  that  almost  convinces.  Our 
changed  appreciation  of  things  "Gothick"  is  the  result  of 
greater  knowledge,  and  is  so  far  truer  than  their  appreciation 
by  the  eighteenth  century ;  but  our  ^Esthetic  interpretation 
of  them  is  not  more  conclusive.  The  man  of  physical 
science,  foretelling  discovery,  has  often  surer  familiarity 
with  the  future  than  has  the  historian  with  the  past.  It  is 
the  point  of  view  that  is  valuable.  To  see  all  things  in 
the  past  is  impossible  ;  but  genius  sees  best  and  the  best 
things.  Mr.  Pater  disengaged  from  the  past  what  moved 
him  most,  fortified  himself  with  positive  knowledge,  and  let 
his  imagination  brood  upon  it,  breathe  life  into  it  and  make 
it  his.  The  form  into  which  he  shaped  the  report  of  his 
imagination,  though  always  beautiful  and  often  powerful, 
was  no  last  word  upon  the  matter,  even  for  himself.  Even 
had  his  writings  that  pretence,  style,  that  saving  balm, 
would  preserve  them ;  but  what  dust  and  ashes  will  lie  thick 
upon  the  pretentious  pronouncements  of  the  modern  writer, 
so  anxious  to  tell  us  final  truth  that  he  forgets  to  charm  ! 

Charm  is  well-nigh  everywhere  in  Mr.  Pater's  work,  a 
golden  grace  upon  the  delicate  sentences;  and  a  charm 
that  is  strangely  strong.  Without  quite  realising  the  reason, 
we  feel  these  gently  persuasive  pages  to  be  as  inevitably 
winning  as  the  "quaint"  speech  of  some  excellent  old 
writer.  It  is  a  quality  that  wakens  friendliness  in  readers, 
and  a  sense  of  personal  affection;  speaking  of  youth,  of 
death,  of  little  homely  things,  Mr.  Pater  in  a  hundred 
passages  seems  to  have  read  his  reader's  heart :  we  come 
upon  a  simple  sentence,  exquisitely  exact,  and  it  is  a 
transcript  from  ourselves.  It  was  just  so  with  us  in  child- 
hood, at  school,  at  Oxford,  in  this  sad  or  glad  experience ; 
no  rare  aesthetic  emotion,  the  monopoly  of  culture,  but 
some  quite  common  thing.     Other  writers  tell  us  of  similar 


NOTES   ON   WALTER    PATER  25 

things;  but  in  modern  times,  only  Cardinal  Newman, 
besides  Mr.  Pater,  tells  us  identical  things,  with  an  intense 
reality  of  phrase  in  their  beautiful  truth.  This  keeping 
close  to  life,  a  sensitiveness  almost  in  excess,  give  to 
Marias  the  EpicureaJi  its  singular  delight.  A  marvellous 
self-discipline  has  made  the  book;  the  writer  upon  such 
an  age  and  theme,  so  rich  in  the  highest  sort  of  magic, 
might  well  have  wondered  at  his  own  moderation,  his 
loyalty  to  the  instinct  of  art,  which  bade  him  leave  unused 
so  much^  and  choose  so  little,  of  all  that  wealth.  The 
soothing  invasion  of  Christianity  into  "  that  hard  Pagan 
world,"  what  effusion  of  sentiment,  what  profusion  of 
rhetoric,  the  theme  invites  !  But  Mr.  Pater,  gladly  enough, 
denies  himself  both.  He  takes  a  young  Roman,  and  follows 
his  meditative  way  to  an  early  death;  and  his  pains  are 
spent  upon  suggesting  just  where  and  how  the  new  power 
of  consolation,  the  new  spring  of  hope,  the  new  strength  of 
joy,  would  win  welcome  from  that  world  of  weariness  and 
satiety.  Little  incidents  and  contrasts,  touched  with  the 
deftest  tact,  convey  "  the  moral."  Marius  himself  is  not, 
in  fact,  converted,  though  his  death  was  "  full  of  grace." 
Yet  the  sweetness  and  the  greatness  of  Christianity  steal 
over  him,  as  over  the  reader,  as  though  the  writer  "  willed  " 
it  almost  without  words ;  whilst  it  is  through  his  austere 
delicacy  in  using  them  that  the  miracle  is  worked  upon  us. 
Marcus  Aurelius,  "  sad  and  splendid,"  Apuleius  the  golden, 
Lucian  laughing  not  too  merrily,  a  supposed  author  of  the 
Pervigilium^  they  live  here,  lightly,  surely  touched,  each 
contributing  to  Marius,  some  thought,  half  hindrance  and 
half  help,  upon  his  pilgrim's  progress.  A  line  from  Tibullus, 
a  passage  from  the  Augustan  History,  a  suggestion  from  the 
Shepherd  of  Hernias,  they  go,  cunningly  and  well,  to  vitalize 
the  story  of  an  age  and  of  a  soul ;  and  from  a  great  store 
of  classical  knowledge  come  dexterously  managed  details, 
reaHsed  and  giving  reality,  none  pedantic  and  none  super- 
fluous.   But  the  dominant  charm  of  the  book  is  its  passionate 


26  POST    LIMIXIUM 

simplicity  of  tone ;  there  is  an  emotion  of  deep  delight  in 
the  recognition  of  beauty,  a  calming  and  grave  beauty, 
evoked  from  daily  natural  things;  a  fold  of  the  distant 
hills,  dreaming  solitudes,  clear  water ;  the  ministrations  of 
earth,  with  her  silences  and  voices,  that  convey  intimations 
of  something  hidden  from  the  schools.  And  among  them, 
as  among  the  business  and  tumult  of  great  Rome,  goes  this 
questioner  of  the  oracles,  with  so  much  fire  beneath  his 
dainty  and  deliberate  bearing,  so  much  wistful  anger  and 
hunger  of  heart ;  amorous  of  nothing  else,  unable  to  be  at 
peace  with  less,  than  the  Dens  ahsconditus  of  his  desire. 

Marius  has  many  brothers;  it  is  a  temperament,  a 
character,  in  which  his  creator  took  an  evident  delight. 
Youth,  confronting  this  very  visible  world,  yet  upon  a 
quest  for  some  interpretation,  harmony,  "  absolute "  truth, 
which  should  make  the  vision,  if  not  "  beatific,"  yet  some- 
how divine ; — that,  to  Mr.  Pater,  master  of  irony  and  of 
pity,  was  a  theme  of  constant  consideration.  He  had 
comparatively  little  concern  for  ages  or  for  souls  of  a 
confident  maturity ;  he  cared  for  them  at  their  "  new  birth," 
with  the  morning  dew  upon  them,  or  in  their  decline,  amid 
autumnal  and  twilight  influences.  In  either  case  there  is  a 
stirring  of  curiosity,  a  wonder  about  what  is  to  come.  Under 
the  exhilaration  of  a  fresh  spirit  breathing  new  life,  or  in 
the  meditative  questions  of  days  slowly  darkling,  he  felt  an 
appeal  to  the  senses  of  frank  enjoyment  or  of  chastening 
doubt ;  there  was  greater  room  in  them  for  sympathy  than 
in  the  full  pride  and  pomp  of  accomplished  triumph.  About 
times  of  assured  success  in  art,  times  superbly  at  their  ease, 
there  is  something  of  Ben  Jonson's  "  insolent  Greece  or 
haughty  Rome  " ;  they  are  "  fat  and  well-liking,"  intolerably 
serene,  seated  on  thrones,  not  needing  that  kind  of  generous 
concern,  a  rush  of  cordial  understanding,  which  seems 
almost  a  piety  towards  less  conquering  times  and  persons. 
Watteau,  Denys  I'Auxerrois,  Sebastian  van  Storck,  Duke 
Carl  of  Rosenmold,  Emerald  Uthwart,  Gaston  de  Latour, — 


NOTES  ON  WALTER  PATER  27 

all  enchantingly  young,  all,  but  the  last,  whose  fate  is  yet 
"upon  the  knees  of  the  gods,"  early  dead;  all,  except 
Sebastian,  eager  animated  athletes  of  life ; — Mr.  Pater  has 
expressed  through  these  his  apprehensions  of  moving  times 
and  tendencies.  Many  another  man  might  have  written,  I 
doubt  not,  written  excellently,  formal  and  set  essays  upon 
Spinoza  and  Holland,  Goethe  and  his  German  precursors, 
and  upon  the  other  themes,  with  much  elegant  erudition 
pleasantly  presented ;  but  none  would  have  turned  us,  with 
a  glow  of  affection,  towards  that  Dutch  home,  that  German 
court,  nor  spoken  to  us  with  Mr.  Pater's  almost  1  wistful 
tenderness  of  humour.  In  these  finely-wrought  miniatures 
of  romance  he  works  with  a  loving  learning  which  leads 
him  to  no  abstract  theory,  but  to  a  delicate  definition  of 
what  is  characteristic  in  his  chosen  studies,  through  a 
dexterous  arrangement  of  their  choice  contents.  Each  little 
touch  is,  as  it  were,  a  note  of  music,  and  has  just  that  value 
in  its  own  place  which  the  harmony  of  the  whole  demands ; 
there  is  no  undue  dwelling  upon  this  or  that  attractive 
matter,  to  the  detriment  of  the  general  scheme.  Never 
violent,  never  vague,  his  style  steadily  and  firmly  prevails 
over  us  and  keeps  us  listening  to  the  close  of  the  piece ; 
the  rhythm  of  thought  and  of  expression  are  in  complete 
accord,  flowing  quietly  together.  He  surprises  the  secret 
of  a  place  or  way  of  life  by  a  sort  of  still  attention,  watch- 
ing, waiting,  until  the  very  truth  of  it  is  his  by  heart.  And 
this  preliminary  patience  makes  his  work  quiet  and  strong ; 
it  has  no  doubts  and  hesitations,  but  confidence  and  calm. 
He  tells  his  tale  with  the  comfortable  security  of  one  telling 
the  most  familiar  things ;  there  is  the  accent  of  one  speak- 
ing, say,  about  "  the  old  home,"  with  a  gentle  glow  in  voice 
and  look.  "  Working  ever,"  he  writes  of  Lamb,  "  close  to 
the  concrete,  to  the  details,  great  or  small,  of  actual  things, 
books,  persons,  and  with  no  part  of  them  blurred  to  vision 
by  the  intervention  of  mere  abstract  theories,  he  has  reached 
an   enduring   moral   effect   also   in   a   sort    of    boundless 


28  POST   LIMIXIUM 

sympathy.     Unoccupied,  as  he  might  seem,  in  the  great 
matters,  he  is   in   immediate   contact   with   what   is   real, 
especially  in  its  caressing  littleness,  that  littleness  in  which 
there  is  much  of  the   whole  woeful  heart  of  things,  and 
meets  it  more  than  half-way  with  a  perfect  understanding 
of  it."     Such  thorough  aflectionate  apprehension  of  things, 
a  going  out  of  the  heart  towards  them,  was  a  first  necessity 
to    Mr.    Pater,    who   never   wrote    of    what    he   did    not 
"appreciate."      This   constant    cordiality    of    his   writings 
makes    them,   for   many   readers,   infinitely    pleasant   and 
alluring :  books  to  read  under  the  garden  trees   and   by 
the  fire.     There  is  a  kindliness  in  them,  as  in  Browne,  and 
Lamb,  and  Hawthorne,  with  much  of  their  various  musing 
melancholies^  never  bitter  nor  morose.     When,  as  in  the 
Essay  on   Style,    Mr.    Pater   has   no    immediately   human 
interest  with  which  to  deal,  but  a  question  of  principle  and 
theory,  his  own  style  loses  much  of  its  charm,  and  we  see 
him,  as  in  that  essay,  eagerly  escaping  from  abstractions  to 
dwell  upon  concrete  illustrations,  such  as  the  example  of 
Flaubert.     For  he  valued  supremely  what  he  called  sotil  in 
literature ;  and,  as   he  expressed  it  :  "  There  are  some  to 
whom  nothing  has  any  real  interest,  or  real  meaning,  except 
as  operative  in  a  given  person ;  and  it  is  they  who  best 
appreciate  the  quality  of  soul  in  literary  art." 

It  is  possible  that  to  his  congenital  distaste  for  what  has 
no  colour,  form,  warmth,  play  of  life,  is  due  a  certain 
misconstruction  of  his  "  philosophy,"  He  has  been  pour- 
trayed,  in  most  imaginary  portraits,  as  a  definitely  sworn 
follower  of  Epicurus,  devoted  to  the  arts  in  a  spirit  of  the 
nobler  sensuousness,  to  the  exclusion  of  all  concerns  other 
than  material.  To  see,  hear,  touch,  feel,  with  a  cultivated 
curiosity,  a  trained  susceptibility ;  that,  so  runs  this  false 
interpretation,  is  the  choicest  life  :  to  eliminate  all  vulgarity 
of  dead  commonplace,  and  live  for  a  succession  of  exquisite 
emotions,  the  gifts  of  beauty  in  nature  and  in  art.  Assuredly, 
Mr.  Pater  held   the  power  of  recognising  and  of  loving 


NOTES    ON    WALTER   PATER  29 

beauty  in  the  world  to  be  a  possession  past  praise,  and  a 
passionate  constancy  of  concern  for  it  to  be  no  mean  state 
of  mind ;  but  assuredly  in  no  ignoble  way.     A  care  for 
beauty  is  not  common  now,  and,  possibly,  has  never  been ; 
a  profound  sense  of  its  greatness,  as  a  thing  neither  to  be 
produced    nor    understood    without    infinite    labour    and 
patience,   is   but   too   rare.     Mr.    Pater   was   never   more 
characteristically  inspired  than  in  writing  of  the  discipline 
of  art,  its  immense  demands^  its  imperative  morality.     In 
his  conception  of  it  he  had  the  austerity  of  Milton  and  of 
Wordsworth ;  he  found  no  words  so  fit  to  express  his  con- 
viction of  its  nobility,  as  words  implying  a  sort  of  consecra- 
tion  and   obedience.     Things    hieratic,   ascetic,   appealed 
always  to  him.     Dissolute  and  lawless  art,  flung  upon  the 
world  in  a  tumultuous  profusion  and  disorder,  was  not  art 
in  his  eyes.    His  favourite  type  of  "  hero  "  was  Ic  bel  serietix, 
self-contained,  of  an  almost  monastic  habit,  with  the  "  white 
soul"  of  youthful  Virgil,  yet  sensitive  to  everything  fine  in 
life.     Pico  della  Mirandola,  he  wrote,  is  a  true  humanist. 
"  For  the  essence  of  humanism  is  that  belief  of  which  he 
seems  never  to  have  doubted,  that  nothing  which  has  ever 
interested  living  men  and  women  can  wholly  lose  its  vitality  : 
no  language  they  have  spoken,  nor  oracle  beside  which 
they  have  hushed  their  voices,  no  dream  which  has  once 
been  entertained   by  actual   human  minds,  nothing  about 
which  they  have  ever  been  passionate,  or  expended  time 
and  zeal."     In   this,  his  own   firm   faith  also,  there   is   a 
pathetic  note,  and  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  it  pre- 
dominates in  all  his  writing  :  "  L'imagination  humaine  est, 
au  fond,  triste  et  se'rieuse."     Pietas  was  a  passion  with  him. 
It  is  strong  in  him  when  he  dwells  with  a  gently  linger- 
ing, long-drawn  music  of  tone,  upon  old,  faded   things : 
philosophies  once  triumphant,  fashions  once  thought  final, 
airs  and  graces  long  passed  away,  music  never  heard  now. 
He  enters  the   vasta   sileiitia  of  old   times,   and   loves  to 
repeople  mediaeval  homes  and  classic  cities ;  to  wander  by 


3©  POST   LIMINIU.M 

the  rivers  of  old  France,  and  through  the  hillside  towns  of 
ancient  Italy ;  recalling  this  and  that  dusty  memory  to  fresh 
life  with  careful  reverence.  At  Assisi,  he  would  forget 
neither  Propertius,  nor  Saint  Francis;  at  Aquino,  neither 
Saint  Thomas,  nor  Juvenal.  No  books  are  more  full  than 
his  of  gracious  loving-kindness;  of  such  tremulous  and 
tender  pity  as  would  disgrace  the  hedonist  in  his  Epicurean 
calm. 

He  stands  quite  alone.  We  sometimes  hear  of  his 
"  school,"  but  it  does  not  exist :  it  is  a  genius,  as  was 
Lamb's,  unique.  His  Renaissance  studies  have  induced  a 
certain  revival  of  interest  in  certain  somewhat  novel  aspects 
of  early  France  and  later  Italy  :  writers  have  written  about 
certain  kinds  of  theme,  because  of  his  writing.  But  none 
have  caught  his  tones,  their  peculiar  felicity  and  proper 
charm.  The  passage  which  in  all  his  writings  is  most 
famous,  and  perhaps  least  characteristic,  is  that  upon  La 
Gioconda :  least  characteristic  because,  for  all  its  beauty, 
least  definite.  And,  being  least  definite,  it  has  been  most 
imitated  in  its  perilous  quality  of  "  suggestiveness  "  :  from 
it  has  come,  in  direct  descent,  but  of  a  degenerate  and 
enfeebled  virtue,  many  a  vague  and  vaporous  passage. 
For  the  rest,  it  is  impossible  to  write  like  Mr.  Pater,  with- 
out his  extraordinary  patience  and  piercing  power  of  vision 
to  see  things,  "  as  they  are,"  by  first  ascertaining  how  they 
are  "  to  him."  When  reminded  that  Art  is  long,  some 
flourishing  modern  writers  seem  to  reply  :  Then  cut  it  short  ; 
but  they  belong,  in  their  contempt  of  patient  pains,  to  "  the 
crowd,  incapable  of  perfectness."  And,  indeed,  English 
literature  in  prose,  since  the  comparative  settlement  of  the 
language,  has  rarely  seen  Mr.  Pater's  equal  for  the  union  of 
so  much  ardent  interest  in  his  substance,  with  so  much 
determination  to  make  his  form  convey  it  perfectly.  To 
write  with  this  superlative  accuracy  and  exactitude  of  phrase 
savours  to  us  of  affectation  :  it  is  from  French  prose  that  we 
expect  it.     But  Mr.  Pater  had  a  courtesy  towards  language, 


NOTES   ON   WALTER   PATER  3 1 

the  material  of  his  art :  a  sense  of  its  essential  dignity  and 
fineness.  Like  his  own  Duke  Carl  of  Rosenmold,  he  would 
have  marble  in  place  of  stucco,  and  the  gilding  should  be 
of  real  gold.  The  conventional  literary  language,  which,  in 
its  worst  debasement,  will  call  a  church  a  sacred  edifice,  is 
ever  tending  to  obliterate  those  distinctions  and  proprieties 
dear  to  a  scholarly  sense,  and  to  write  in  a  level  style,  wholly 
uninteresting,  whilst  unnatural.  "  There  is  no  Excellent 
Beauty,"  notes  Bacon,  "  that  hath  not  some  strangeness  in 
the  proportion."  Strangeness,  a  stirring  of  pleased  surprise, 
the  charm  of  an  admiring  wonder  felt  without  disturbance, 
yet  with  something  of  a  thrill,  are  elements  in  all  the  finest 
art:  and,  as  language  loses  its  "unchartered  freedom," 
becoming  fixed  and  formal,  literary  artists  are  increasingly 
forced  to  this  "  strangeness,"  which  is  to  be  had  far  less  by 
a  bizarre  vocabulary  than  by  a  sensitiveness  to  the  value, 
the  precise  value,  of  common  words  in  their  precise  significa- 
tion. Mystery,  economy,  pagan,  gracious,  cordial,  mortified — 
to  use  such  words,  with  just  a  hint  of  their  first  meanings, 
is  for  the  scholarly  writer  and  reader  a  delicate  pleasure, 
heightening  the  vivid  interest  of  a  phrase.  Mr.  Pater's 
vocabulary  is,  for  the  most  part,  simple  enough  -,  and  much 
of  his  curious  charm  comes  from  such  feeling  for  the  associa- 
tions of  ordinary  words.  The  effect  of  his  style  is  often 
that  of  a  courteous,  somewhat  old-fashioned  talker,  at  once 
urbane  and  easy,  always  leisurely  and  distinct.  For, 
intricate  as  he  can  be,  especially  in  his  later  work,  the 
intricacy  is  not  a  German  clumsiness,  nor  the  involution  of 
Milton,  nor  the  complexity  of  Thucydides  :  there  are  balance 
and  lucidity  of  aim,  an  orderly  unfolding  of  thought.  His 
way  of  work  denied  him  certain  advantages  at  the  command 
of  less  weighty  and  methodical  writers  :  versatile  brilliance, 
a  mercurial  agility,  flashing  plays  of  fancy ;  he  had  always 
something  of  that  singleness  of  purpose  and  absorption  in 
the  theme  before  him  which  distinguished  a  century  of 
English  writers  whom   he  did  not  intimately  relish  :  the 


32  POST   LIMINIUM 

century  of  Addison  and  Johnson.  A  constant  attention  to 
minute  proprieties  can  hardly  go  with  any  wild  rapidity  of 
wit.  Wit  is  a  shooting  star ;  humour,  a  quiet  and  enduring 
glow ;  and  humour,  the  humour  of  Lamb  writing,  not  upon 
Roast  Pig,  but  upon  Old  China,  was  an  element  in  all  that 
Mr.  Pater  did. 

Another  "  strangeness "  worked  in  certain  of  his  con- 
ceptions which  have  a  captivating  vividness,  sometimes 
whimsicality,  of  effect.  Breakings-out  of  pagan  passion 
in  Christian  days,  cloistral  places ;  Apollo,  surely,  and 
Dionysus,  radiant  again,  or  suffering  in  the  chilly  light  of 
the  new  world,  but,  in  either  case,  exercising  an  micanny, 
devilish  influence ; — so,  with  cunning  magic,  LIr.  Pater 
would  embody  the  feeling  of  revulsion  towards  the  ancient 
ideals  of  sensuous  liberty  or  servitude  in  the  sunlight 
and  open  air.  "  The  fiend  Apollo  !  "  sings  Cowley.  Mr. 
Pater  discerns  the  troubling  element  of  paganism,  never 
exorcised  into  safe  banishment,  at  work  in  various  forms  : 
pantheistic  philosophy,  the  delirious  ways  of  "  mediaeval 
love,"  strange  possessions  and  subtle  hauntings,  antinomian 
conclusions  from  Christian  premises.  Again,  in  Tennyson's 
phrase,  "  the  passion  of  the  past ! "  Strongly  drawn  towards 
the  Hellenic  world,  upon  which  he  wrote  so  well,  a  little 
in  the  fashion  of  Paul  de  Saint-Victor,  Mr.  Pater  seems 
unwilling  to  think  of  it  as  really  gone,  consigned  to  the 
learned  and  to  museums.  He  detects  it  still  with  us,  now 
as  a  wild  sort  of  enchantment,  now  as  a  delightful  and 
tranquillising  source  of  wisdom. 

Among  his  latest  writings  was  a  stately  and  impassioned 
praise  of  Sparta,  her  superb  severity  and  cleanliness  of  ideal. 
He  loved,  also,  to  trace  the  mystical  and  sterner  elements 
underlying  the  Hellenic  "  blitheness  "  and  civihty.  In  truth, 
his  whole  work  treats  of  influences,  the  coming  in  of  a  new 
spirit,  the  re-assertion  of  an  old,  their  mutual  play ;  there, 
for  him,  is  the  dramatic  passion  of  life,  in  a  kind  of  prophetic 
feeling  and  apprehension.     Denys  I'Auxerrois,  "a  lover  of 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    PATER  33 

fertility  in  all  its  forms,  in  what  did  but  suggest  it,  was  curious 
and  penetrative  concerning  the  habits  of  water,  and  had  the 
secret  of  the  divining-rod.  Long  before  it  came,  he  could 
detect  the  scent  of  rain  from  afar,  and  would  climb  with 
delight  to  the  great  scaffolding  on  the  unfinished  tower,  to 
watch  its  coming  over  the  thirsty  vine- land,  till  it  rattled  on 
the  great  tiled  roof  of  the  church  below  ;  and  then,  throwing 
off  his  mantle,  allow  it  to  bathe  his  limbs  freely,  clinging 
firmly  against  the  tempestuous  wind,  among  the  carved 
imageries  of  dark  stone." 

An  instinct  that  foretells  or  forewarns  of  a  gracious  rain, 
or  of  a  beating  storm,  soon  to  fall  upon  men's  spirits,  in 
Renaissance,  or  Reformation,  or  Revolution,  seemed  to 
Mr.  Pater  the  gift  of  profound  and  passionate  natures,  who 
share  "  the  prophetic  soul  of  the  wide  world  dreaming  on 
things  to  come."  Little  things,  changes,  say,  in  the  fashion 
of  decorating  our  houses,'  had  for  him  an  inherent  deeper 
meaning :  as  to  Plato,  change  in  a  nation's  music  meant 
change  in  a  nation's  laws.  The  setting  of  our  lives,  though 
it  can  be  but  the  setting,  works  upon  them  strangely ;  and 
inanimate  things  come  to  be  for  us,  as  to  primitive  or  savage 
man,  "  full  of  souls,"  full  of  personality,  with  power  and 
virtue  in  them.  The  pensive  diarist,  through  whom  Mr. 
Pater  discourses  of  Watteau,  prince  of  court  painters,  writes 
in  her  delightful  way  :  "  He  has  completed  the  ovals,  The 
Four  Seasons.  Oh  !  the  summer-like  grace,  the  freedom 
and  softness  of  the  '  Summer,'  a  hay-field  such  as  we  visited 
to-day,  but  boundless^  and  with  touches  of  level  Italian 
architecture  in  the  hot,  white,  elusive  distance,  and  wreaths 
of  flowers,  fairy  hayrakes  and  the  like,  suspended  from  tree 
to  tree,  with  that  wonderful  lightness  which  is  one  of  the 
charms  of  his  work.  I  can  understand  through  this,  at  last, 
what  it  is  he  enjoys,  what  he  selects  by  preference  from  all 
that  various  world  we  pass  our  lives  in.  I  am  struck  by  the 
purity  of  the  room  he  has  refashioned  for  us  :  a  sort  ol moral 
purity  ;  yet,  in  the  forms  and  colours  of  things."    In  a  great 


34  POST    LIMINIUM 

variety  of  ways  Mr.  Pater  pourtrayed  the  physical  effect  of 
beautiful  things,  whether  seen,  or  heard,  or  believed,  or  felt. 
Thus,  for  a  supreme  example,  it  seemed  to  Marius,  at  that 
first  Mass  in  the  Cecilian  villa,  that  "  as  if  some  profound 
correction  and  regeneration  of  the  body  by  the  spirit,  had 
been  begun,  and  already  gone  a  long  way,  the  countenances 
of  men,  women,  and  children  had  a  brightness  upon  them 
which  he  could  fancy  reflected  upon  himself."  The  breath 
of  the  spirit,  at  rare  seasons  of  time,  renews  the  face,  not  of 
the  earth  only,  but  the  very  faces  of  men  no  less;  and 
things  in  which  fine  beauty  is  present,  have  a  like  power, 
each  in  its  degree,  upon  the  beholder  of  them,  the  dweller 
among  them.  So,  writes  Mr.  Pater,  Wordsworth  "  conceives 
of  noble  sound  as  even  moulding  the  human  countenance 
to  nobler  types " ;  and  so  Plato  would  have  his  youth 
"  dwell  in  a  land  of  health,  amid  fair  sights  and  sounds, 
and  receive  the  good  in  all  things  ;  and  beauty,  the  effluence 
of  fair  works,  shall  flow  into  eye  and  ear,  like  some  salutary 
wind  from  a  purer  region,  and  draw  the  soul  insensibly, 
from  earliest  years,  into  likeness  and  sympathy  with  the 
'  beauty  of  reason." 

In  all  this  mode  of  seeing  things,  and  of  undergoing  their 
influence,  the  inflowing  of  their  spirit,  there  is  a  mysticism 
not  unlike  Swedenborg's  doctrine  of  "  celestial  correspond- 
ence": or  that  mystical  interpretation  of  nature  so  neces- 
sary to  Newman ;  as  when  he  says  of  the  angels  :  "  Every 
breath  of  air  and  ray  of  light  and  heat,  every  beautiful 
prospect  is,  as  it  were,  the  skirts  of  their  garments,  the  waving 
of  the  robes  of  those  whose  faces  see  God  in  Heaven "  : 
so  to  speak,  a  sacramental  and  symbolic  theory  of  the 
universe,  which  Spiritus  inhis  alit:  whereby,  as  Mr.  Pater 
has  it,  "  all  the  acts  and  accidents  of  daily  life  borrow  a 
sacred  colour  and  significance."  A  perpetual  wondering 
joy  in  the  messages  brought  by  beautiful  things,  through 
their  visible  forms,  was  a  kind  of  worship  to  him  :  he  had 
a  Franciscan  poetry  in  the  almost  childlike  freshness  of  his 


NOTES  ON  WALTER  PATER  35 

delight  in  them ;  though  "  refining  upon  his  pleasure,"  as 
Congreve  put  it,  he  carefully  sought  out  the  precise  secret 
of  the  delight.  This  poetry  turned  the  blossoming  of  flowers, 
the  genial  sunlight,  the  gliding  of  cool  waters,  into  a  sort 
of  ritual,  devised  by  the  Divine  Wisdom,  fortiter  sauviterque 
disponens  oitinia :  and  the  creations  of  art  had  an  exaltation 
in  them  as  instinct  with  sacred  fire.  Thus,  the  gravity  and 
gentle  seriousness  of  his  "  heroes "  were  the  necessary 
carriage  of  men  walking  in  holy  places  with  an  awe  upon 
them :  as  Marius,  amid  the  old  country  religion  of  Rome, 
"brought  to  that  system  of  symbolic  usages,  and  they  in 
turn  developed  in  him  further,  a  great  seriousness,  an 
impressibility  to  the  sacredness  of  time,  of  life  and  its 
events,  and  the  circumstances  of  family  fellowship  ;  of  such 
gifts  to  men  as  fire,  water,  the  earth  from  labour  on  which 
they  live,  really  understood  by  him  as  gifts ;  a  sense  of 
religious  responsibility  in  the  reception  of  them."  In 
fortunate  and  chosen  places,  full  of  this  divinity  and  mystery> 
Marius  and  his  fellows  seem  to  say  : 

."  His  ibi  me  rebus  quasdam  divina  voluptas 
Percipit  atque  horror: " 

and,  like  the  Amalekite  king  on  the  way  to  death,  they  "  go 
delicately,"  but  somewhat  shrinking  from  its  unknown  dark 
and  cold,  dreading  the  initiation  into  its  mysteries,  and  the 
cry  :  "  Komvit  zur  geJieiligten  Nacht !  " 

This  is  the  air  or  atmosphere  of  Mr.  Pater's  writings : 
this  "  hieratic "  emotion.  A  devoted  student  of  art,  he 
took  no  part  in  what  Fuseli  calls  the  "  frantic  pilgrimage  to 
Italy,"  or  elsewhere ;  he  never,  that  is,  wrote  with  an  un- 
considered zeal,  nor  in  terms  of  merely  general  praise, 
about  what  moved  him.  Nor  did  he,  as  Fuseli  says 
of  Leonardo,  "  waste  life^  insatiate  in  experiment." 
Essayist,  meditator  that  he  was,  he  was  never  tenta- 
tive, but  the  most  decided  of  writers  in  self-knowledge. 
Magica  Sympathiae!  words  borne  upon  the  shield  of  Lord 


S6  POST   LIMINIUM 

Herbert  of  Cherbury,  are  inscribed  upon  the  writings  of 
Mr.  Pater,  who  found  his  way  straight  from  the  first  to 
those  matters  proper  to  his  genius.  And  the  proper 
expressiveness  was  there  also,  the  singular  modulation  of 
style,  with  its  appeaUng  and  persuasive  quality.  Like 
Marius,  he  felt  his  vocation  :  dedicating  himself  to  literature, 
with  a  very  deliberate  consciousness  of  taking  up  no  light 
responsibility;  in  him,  as  in  the  ardent  Flavian,  "this 
scrupulousness  of  literary  art  actually  awoke  ...  a  sort  of 
chivalrous  conscience  ...  In  those  refinements  of  his 
curious  spirit,  in  that  horror  of  profanities,  in  that  fastidious 
sense  of  a  correctness  in  external  form,  there  was  some- 
thing which  ministered  to  the  old  ritual  interest,  still 
surviving  in  him ;  as  if  here  indeed  were  involved  a  kind 
of  sacred  service  to  the  mother-tongue."  JVemo  perfecfus  est, 
says  Saint  Bernard,  qiu  perfectior  esse  iion  appctit :  it  is  as 
true  in  art  as  in  religion.  In  art,  also,  "  the  way  to  per- 
fection lies  through  a  series  of  disgusts." 

He  stands  alone,  with  no  contemporary  in  any  way 
resembling  him  ;  and  he  recalls  no  one  in  the  past,  though 
here  and  there  we  can  catch  faint  echoes  and  odours,  as  it 
were,  from  earlier  work.  Perhaps  there  is  in  him  some- 
thing comparable  to  the  curiosa  felicitas  of  our  seventeenth- 
century  poets  at  their  happiest :  Herrick,  Marvell,  Vaughan, 
in  whom  there  is  often  that  perfect  harmony  of  matter 
with  form  which  seems  no  less  than  a  miracle,  defying  criti- 
cism, and  purely  a  gift  of  the  "  Good  Spirit,"  as  one  of  them 
has  said.  We  have  had  no  lack  of  Euphuists ;  Mr.  Pater 
has  prettily  vindicated  a  certain  sort  of  Euphuism,  but  our 
English  Euphuists  have  not  been  strong  writers,  and  their 
themes  have  been  over-sweet  and  honied.  Mr.  Pater  will 
discourse,  say,  upon  Darwinism,  or  upon  Heraclitus,  or 
upon  any  other  severe  matter,  yet  without  abating  one  jot 
of  his  care  for  beauty;  his  Euphuism,  if  that  be  not  too 
suspect  a  word,  was  no  dreamy  toying  with  rich  and  strange 
expressions.     He  gave  much  time  to  the  aesthetic  theorists 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    PATER  37 

of  Germany,  Winckelmann,  Lessing,  Goethe,  Hegel :  such 
speculations  as  theirs  agreed  well  with  that  cogitating  and 
searching  spirit  strong  in  him.  Such  preoccupation  with 
things  of  the  mind,  serious,  solid  things,  as  the  German  loves 
to  entertain,  was  certainly  not  foreign  to  Mr.  Pater,  though 
it  was  in  ways  very  far  from  German  that  he  touched  upon 
them.  Still,  a  perceptible  slowness  and  fulness  in  his 
expository  periods,  even  an  occasional  heaviness,  have 
something  about  them  that  recalls  some  German  prose  by 
great  writers.  In  Germany  also,  as  well  as  in  the  France  of 
1830,  in  Meinhold  and  Heine,  as  well  as  in  Hugo  and 
Gautier,  he  found  the  romantic  strain  that  had  charms  for 
him  ;  and  though  Chartres  and  Rheims  and  Amiens  brought 
back  to  him  the  Middle  Age,  strange  and  grotesque,  and 
"  gorgeous  upon  earth  again,"  in  full  beauty  and  power,  yet 
"  under  the  spire  of  Strasburg  or  the  towers  of  Heidelberg  " 
he  also  loved  to  listen  for  "  the  melodious,  fascinating 
voices  of  the  Middle  Age."  Something  homely,  too,  made 
itself  felt  in  Germany,  as  in  Holland,  with  its  grave  burghers 
and  trim  gardens,  and  cleanly,  comfortable  life.  There 
was  a  quietism  and  a  vein  of  the  renunciant  in  his  nature, 
which  found  a  feverishness  of  brilliance  in  much  French 
literature  that  yet  he  valued  ;  and  he  "  went  into  retreat," 
as  it  were,  by  turning  his  meditations  upon  less  agitating 
things,  and  an  art,  humbler  perhaps,  yet  certainly  mellower 
and  simpler.  But  to  France  of  the  Middle  Age  and  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  the  France  of  the  great  churches,  and  the 
France  of  Ronsard  and  Montaigne,  he  devoted  much 
pleasant  labour,  writing  with  something  between  the  fervour 
of  Michelet  and  the  suavity  of  Renan  in  the  attitude  of  his 
mind  towards  them.  In  the  literature  of  modern  France  he 
most  prized  that  lightness  and  courteous  grace,  becoming 
less  characteristic  there  now  than  formerly,  which  have  so 
long  made  French  prose  universally  welcome.  Intellectual 
adroitness,  complete  ability  to  do  the  thing  desired  and 
have  done  with  it,  naturally  won  his  admiration  ;  though  he 


38  POST   LIMINIUM 

loved  them  best  when  softened  and  sweetened  with  just 
that  charm  of  unction  which  is  not  there,  as  commonly  it  is 
in  England,  a  gush  of  sentiment.  Thus,  praising  Merimee 
for  his  admirable  qualities,  he  also  points  out  "  that  singular 
harshness  in  his  ideal,  as  if,  in  theological  language,  he  were 
incapable  of  grace."  But  though  we  may  discover,  or 
imagine,  in  Mr.  Pater's  work  French  and  German  influences, 
there  is  certainly  no  writer  of  either  race,  as  there  is  none 
in  England,  to  whom  he  is  indebted,  as,  for  example, 
Arnold  is  indebted  to  Sainte-Beuve.  The  critics,  concerned 
with  a  like  range  of  interests,  have  not  his  dramatic,  con- 
crete manner ;  whilst  his  series  of  critical  portraits  is  with- 
out parallel  altogether.  Rousseau,  Goethe,  Chateaubriand, 
Senancour,  with  their  querulous,  weary  types  of  the 
undisciplined  and  the  dissatisfied^  do  not  come  within 
reach  of  an  appropriate  comparison. 

If,  echoing  Casaubon  in  the  Hall  of  the  Sorbonne,  we 
ask  :  What,  with  all  these  pains  and  cares,  has  Mr.  Pater 
settled  ?  The  answer  is,  that  neither  he,  nor  any  other 
critic  of  art,  has  ever  settled  anything ;  and  that  he  has  the 
distinction  of  having  made  no  pretences  of  the  kind.  Bacon 
distinguishes  between  great  poetry  and  history,  by  saying 
that  the  one  submits  its  matter  to  the  desires  of  the  mind ; 
the  other  reverses  the  procedure.  It  is  true  of  all  fine  art, 
and  criticism  is  a  fine  art.  The  desires  of  the  artist's  mind, 
the  vision  of  his  soul,  the  passion  of  his  personality,  appre- 
hend beauty  and  truth,  well  or  ill,  finely  or  less  finely, 
according  to  their  own  excellence.  And  truly,  as  Joubert 
said,  we  should  hesitate  before  we  differ  in  religion  from 
the  saints,  in  poetry  from  the  poets  :  the  chances  are  in 
favour  of  their  being  right.  But  only  in  virtue  of  their 
wisely  discerning  and  deeply  feeling  spirit ;  by  no  absolute 
authority.  "  Spirits  are  not  finely  touched,  but  to  fine 
issues,"  and  when  a  Coleridge  or  a  Lamb  is  finely  touched, 
inspired,  enlightened,  whether  by  a  flash  of  insight  or  by 
prolonged    meditation,    the    issue    is    fine,   his    utterance 


NOTES   ON    WALTER   PATER  39 

commands  respect.  But  in  the  discovery  of  historical  fact, 
it  matters  little  or  not  at  all  who  may  be  the  discoverer; 
the  value  of  the  discovery  itself  does  not  depend  upon  the 
fine  quality  of  the  discoverer's  mind.  Indeed,  Bacon's 
saying  is  but  his  enemy  Aristotle's  :  poetry,  and  we  may 
add,  all  imaginative  Uterature,  is  more  high  and  philo- 
sophical than  history.  All  the  ancient  imagery  of  "the 
sacred  fire,"  "  the  divine  afflatus"  " fine  madness,"  and  the 
like,  applied  to  the  artist,  does  but  testify  to  the  truth,  that 
he  must  have  before  him  a  "  master  light "  and  guiding 
star.  His  sense  of  art's  greatness  will  keep  his  conscience 
sensitive,  make  him  tolerant  of  much  labour,  endow  him 
with  much  patience,  that  he  may  be  faithful  to  "  the  desires 
of  his  mind,"  evading  no  difficulty,  allowing  no  compromise, 
his  heart  set  upon  perfection.  What  he  gives  us  will  at 
least  be  of  fine  interest ;  it  may  have  a  compelling  and  irre- 
sistible power  upon  us.  Doubtless,  there  are  many  ways  of 
work :  the  gradual  labour  of  (jray,  the  lightning  speed 
of  Shelley;  but  the  one  spirit  rules  the  diversities  of 
operation. 

It  is  possible  to  differ  from  Mr.  Pater  in  many  things  : 
his  estimate  of  Michael  Angelo's  religion,  his  views  of 
Plato's  doctrine,  his  interpretation  of  Botticelli's  Madonnas, 
his  whole  conception  of  the  Renaissance,  with  much  else, 
have  been  thought  by  some  dubious,  if  not  perverse.  Yet, 
that  he  is  a  writer  of  fine  interest,  whose  work  proceeds 
from  a  fine  spiritual  and  intellectual  passion,  is  not  to  be 
questioned ;  distinction  is  upon  every  line,  an  exquisite 
quality  of  mind.  With  Newman  and  Arnold,  he  has  the 
secret  of  that  ideal  delicacy  and  graciousness,  to  which 
"  that  sweet  city  with  her  dreaming  spires  "  can  minister  so 
well.  Writing  at  a  somewhat  vexed  time,  full  of  challenges 
and  of  battles,  he  gave  an  example  of  perfect  dignity,  un- 
wearied effort,  clear  aim.  In  an  age  weary  and  oppressed 
with  a  multiplicity  of  studies  and  the  increase  of  knowledge, 
he  produced  but  the  fine  flower  of  his  taste  and  learning. 


40  POST    LIMINIUM 

With  no  sort  of  contempt  for  popularity,  he  never  courted 
it,  never  swerved  from  his  deliberate  path,  never  remitted 
the  rigour  of  his  artistic  discipline.  Not  Milton  himself 
more  resolutely  and  passionately  dedicated  his  days  to 
the  service  of  high  and  noble  art ;  and  his  work  has  upon 
it  that  air  of  tranquillity  and  serene  accomplishment  which 
comes  of  such  devotion.  There  is  a  strange  purity  of  effect, 
the  result  of  the  refiner's  fire  through  which  it  has  passed. 
The  ^\''elsh  word  for  white  means  also  something  which  is  a 
combination  of  holy^  reverend^  felicitous  ;  much  in  the  sense 
of  Herrick's  White  Island.  In  the  finer  portions  of  Mr. 
Pater's  work,  there  is  a  "whiteness,"  a  "candour"  in- 
describably felt,  through  this  purity  and  cleanliness  of  it,  as 
though  there  were  "a  sort  of  moral  purity"  in  art  of  so 
scrupulous  and  dainty  a  distinction :  the  freedom  from 
violence  and  coarseness,  the  gentleness  and  calm,  helped 
by  the  constant  ripple  of  quiet  humour,  serving  to  put  the 
reader  into  a  peaceful  mood.  That  work  so  curiously 
wrought  should  have  this  effect,  is  an  answer  to  any  charge 
of  excessive  strangeness  or  artificiality.  The  styles  of 
Carlyle  and  Browning  may  not  distress  us,  but  certainly  we 
are  violently  and  forcibly  aware  of  them.  Mr.  Pater's 
elaborate  cadences  and  constructions,  his  sensitive  choice 
of  words,  bring  with  them  no  shock,  but  only  a  pleasing 
spelL  It  would  be  quite  otherwise  were  Mr.  Pater's  style 
tonrmente :  or,  to  borrow  epithets  from  Maupassant,  bizay-re^ 
compliqjie,  chifiois.  This  tranquillity  is  one  of  the  chief 
graces  vouchsafed  to  a  reverent  study  of  things  rare  and 
fine  :  away  from  the  bustling  pettiness  of  meaner  cares,  a 
mind,  travelling  through  the  world  of  high  beauty  in  form 
and  thought  and  imagination,  with  ardour  and  in  peace, 
cannot  but  take  away  something  of  the  profound  calm 
which  rests  upon  the  greatest  art.  Mr.  Pater's  reverence 
towards  the  achievements  of  genius,  even  in  its  less  lofty 
manifestations,  is  of  admirable  example  :  it  is  a  protest 
against    the    familiarity   and    the   haste   which    think    to 


NOTES   ON   WALTER    PATER  41 

comprehend  the  masters  by  an  easy  and  a  swift  acquaint- 
ance ;  a  rebuke  to  impatience  and  to  unreality  in  criticism ; 
a  vindication  of  scholarship  and  of  art  against  those  who 
profess  to  serve  the  second,  while  they  ignore  the  first. 

Amourists  of  perfection,  each  according  to  his  capacity, 
in  things  great  and  in  things  little;  workmen  desirous  of 
doing  their  best ; — that  is  what  Mr.  Pater  sets  forth,  now 
through  a  Michael  Angelo  and  a  Leonardo,  now  in  a 
Luca  della  Robbia  and  a  Joachim  du  Bellay.  Equally 
strenuous  and  passionate  are  his  workers  with  pure  thought : 
Sebastian,  with  his  eagerness  over  "  Nihilism "  and  nega- 
tion ;  Bruno,  burning  with  the  fire  of  his  wild  spirit.  The 
life  of  the  mind  and  the  imagination  becomes  a  scene  of 
adventure  and  romance ;  the  ends  of  its  hope  and  aspira- 
tion seem  like  crowns  and  kingdoms,  visible  things  to  be 
won  by  conquest.  There  is  no  languorous  playing  with 
things  of  beauty,  in  a  kind  of  opiate  dream,  to  be  found 
here.  '*  If  one  had  to  choose  a  single  product  of  Hellenic 
art,  to  save  in  the  wreck  of  all  the  rest,  one  would  choose 
from  the  '  beautiful  multitude '  of  the  Panathenaic  frieze, 
that  line  of  youths  on  horseback,  with  their  level  glances, 
their  proud,  patient  lips,  their  chastened  reins,  their  whole 
bodies  in  exquisite  service."  That  is  from  the  earliest 
essay  in  Mr.  Pater's  first  book,  "  Platonic  aesthetics, 
remember,  as  such,  are  ever  in  close  connection  with 
Plato's  ethics.  It  is  life  itself,  action  and  character,  he 
proposes  to  colour ;  to  get  something  of  that  irrepressible 
conscience  of  art,  that  spirit  of  control,  into  the  general 
course  of  life,  above  all,  into  its  energetic  or  impassioned 
acts."  That  is  from  the  last  essay  in  his  last  book.  There 
is  an  interval  of  twenty-five  years  between  the  two  passages ; 
yet,  if  you  consider  it  well,  the  latter  is  implicit  in  the 
earlier.  It  was  with  this  constant  sense  of  the  relationship 
between  discipline  and  refinement,  circumstance  and 
character,  that  Mr.  Pater  was  fond  of  dwelling  upon  the 
value  of  our  ancient  public  schools   and  universities   in 


42  POST   LIiMINIUM 

England;  he  traced  to  their  influence,  unconsciously 
accepted  though  it  may  often  be,  much  that  is  character- 
istically and  happily  English.  For  old  institutions, 
thronged  with  memories,  rich  in  history,  for  the  very 
voices  of  their  weathered  walls,  he  had  a  feeling  like  that 
of  Burke;  and  for  "utilitarian"  or  "  scientific  "  theories  of 
education  he  felt  an  almost  vehement  dislike,  so  mechani- 
cal and  impoverishing  to  the  spirit  did  he  think  them. 

There  could  hardly  have  been  a  greater  loss  to  con- 
temporary literature  just  at  the  present  time ;  the  champion 
of  no  school,  he  was  almost  alone  among  the  writers  of 
English  prose  in  simply  maintaining  an  ideal  of  high 
severity  and  excellence.  His  rare  work,  given  to  the  world 
from  time  to  time,  quietly  reminded  a  new  generation  of 
certain  palmary  and  indispensable  virtues,  not  easy  of 
attainment,  which  are  in  danger  of  becoming  old-fashioned 
or  forgotten.  Emphatically  the  scholar  and  man  of  letters, 
there  was  in  his  life  and  work  a  perfect  expression  of  that 
single-hearted  devotion  to  fine  literature,  yet  without  a 
shadow  of  pedantry,  which  is  ceasing  to  flourish  in  the 
ancient  academic  places.  There  is  yet  deeper  sorrow, 
upon  which  I  cannot  touch,  save  to  say  that  to  younger 
men  concerned  with  any  of  the  arts,  he  was  the  most 
generous  and  gracious  of  helpful  friends.  In  due  time, 
they  will  be  able  to  think,  with  nothing  but  a  reverent 
affection,  of  the  admired  writer  at  last  laid  to  rest  under 
the  towers  and  trees  of  his  own  Oxford. 


CHARLOTTE   BRONTE   AND    HER 
CHAMPION 

\The  Daily  Chronicle,  June  23,  1900;   The  Academy,  Aug.  4,  1900,] 
..."  What  a  story  is  that  of  that  family  of  poets  in  their 
solitude   yonder  on  the  gloomy  northern  moors  ! "   cried 
Thackeray.     To  quote  Mr.  Swinburne,  it  is  to  "  the  sweet 


CHARLOTTE  BRONTE  AND  HER  CHAMPION      43 

and  noble  genius  of  Mrs.  Gaskell "  that  we  owe  our  full  and 
intimate  knowledge  of  the  tragic,  strange,  heroic  history. 
She  ^vrought  it  out  with  a  Boswellian  industry  and  enthu- 
siasm, as  a  sacred  and  dear  task.  She  made  it  a  work  of 
art,  faithful  to  the  truth,  just  in  proportion  and  design,  an 
abiding  monument  of  love  and  labour.*  .  .  . 

It  is  not  the  least  notable  feature  of  ^Irs.  Gaskell's  work 
that  she  accomplished  it  with  comparatively  slight  personal 
intimacy  with  Charlotte  Bronte  and  her  family ;  and  further, 
it  was  not  with  women,  not  even  with  such  women  as  Miss 
Martineau,  that  Charlotte  Bronte  felt  the  affinity  of  intel- 
lectual companionship. 

With  women,  she  is  Miss  Bronte  of  Haworth  Vicarage, 
busied  with  common  domesticities,  with  family  joys  and 
cares ;  she  neither  expects  nor  gives  manifestations  of  genius 
and  airs  of  intellectuality.  With  the  men,  some  of  them 
remarkable  in  literature,  whose  correspondent  she  became, 
she  was  "  Currer  Bell,"  strong  in  thought,  rich  in  imagina- 
tion, an  ardent  and  inveterate  critic  of  life  and  letters. 
Of  this  Charlotte  Bronte  Mrs.  Gaskell  knew  little  by  expe- 
rience, but  she  discerned  the  truth  by  unerring  intuition. 
The  result  is  an  arresting  portrait  of  the  shy,  home-keeping 
woman,  who  was  also  a  persistent  artist,  the  reverse  of  shy : 
of  the  woman  who  can  write  of  Thackeray  as  equal  writes 
of  equal,  but  who  cannot  speak  to  him  without  nervous 
perturbation.  And  the  portrait  is  intensely  credible,  intel- 
ligible, real ;  as  we  have  said,  Boswellian  in  persuasiveness. 
The  late  Mr.  Hutton  has  said  of  Miss  Bronte  that  "  there 

*  Mrs.  Gaskell's  noble  Life  of  her  great  fellow-artist  and  friend 
stands  in  no  need  of  elaborated  praise  ;  but  it  has  for  some  time  stood 
in  need  of  precisely  that  reverent  treatment  wherewith  Mr,  Clement 
Shorter  has  treated  it.  His  introduction,  chronology,  notes,  are 
entirely  helpful  and  welcome.  Here  is  no  re-wriling  of  Mrs.  Gaskell, 
no  tampering  with  her  text,  but  just  those  elucidations,  comments,  that 
additional  or  complementary  matter,  which  the  lapse  of  time  necessi- 
tates. It  is  probably  an  edition  of  a  classic  as  final  as  is  Dr.  Birkbeck 
Hill's  edition  of  Boswell.     We  could  not  say  more. — [L.  J.] 


44  POST   LIMINIUM 

is  even  an  abruptness  of  outline,  a  total  want  of  social 
cohesion,  among  her  characters.  They  are  sternly  drawn, 
with  much  strong  shading,  and  kept  in  isolated  spheres." 
]Mrs.  Gaskell .  might  well  have  been  tempted  to  draw  her 
heroine's  own  character  after  that  fashion;  to  emphasise 
the  contrast  between  the  obscure  parson's  reticent,  retiring 
daughter,  and  the  writer  of  books  that  stirred  all  reading 
England.  She  saw  deeper,  felt  more  profoundly,  than  to 
do  that ;  and  her  biography  is  a  veritable  interpretation. 
She  makes  us  realise  how  all  that  is  best  and  worst  in  the 
immortal  novels  springs  from  what  we  may  call  an  intel- 
lectual and  imaginative  virginity,  a  vestal  mind :  the  woman 
of  few  experiences,  yet  those  few  passionately  felt.  The 
sensitive,  sensible  woman  cloistered  in  a  far  moorland 
village,  took  the  advice  of  Sir  PhiUp  Sydney's  Muse  :  she 
"  looked  in  her  heart,  and  wrote."  Access  to  great  libraries, 
large  intercourse  with  the  world  of  literature,  freedom  to 
travel  and  to  live  variously,  might  have  wrecked  her  proper 
genius  and  diverted  it  from  the  inspiration  of  its  native 
springs.  "  In  concentration  is  strength,"  said  Goethe ;  and 
Miss  Bronte,  herein  like  Miss  Austen  whom  she  so  amusingly 
and  inevitably  undervalued,  would  not  have  loyally  served 
and  obeyed  her  genius  had  she  met  with  the  chances  and 
diverse  opportunities  of  George  Eliot  or  of  George  Sand.  .  .  . 
She  was  none  of  Dr.  Johnson's  ladies :  no  Mrs.  Thrale, 
Miss  Burney,  Mrs.  Montague,  Charlotte  Lennox,  Hannah 
More;  no  brilliant  blue-stocking,  no  queen  of  salons^  no 
intimate  of  wits  and  statesmen ;  no  elegant  candidate  for 
the  honours  of  Sir  Joshua's  canvas,  the  whispered  compli- 
ments of  Burke,  the  rounded  nothings  of  snuff-box-tapping 
Gibbon,  the  dear  impertinences  of  Boswell.  Yet  she  lived 
a  full  life  in  her  brief  allotted  period.  Not  a  peopled, 
thronged,  frequented  life,  but  one  passed  in  the  almost 
visible  society  of  a  few  profound  emotions,  a  few  deep  joys 
and  sorrows,  a  few  ardent  aspirations  and  desires.  .  .  .  She 
was  no  "  woman  of  the  world ; "   but   she  was  a  woman 


CPfARLOTTE    BRONTE    AND    HER    CHAMPION  45 

of  her  own  world,  her  world  of  the  flesh  as  of  the 
spirit.  .  .  . 

Nothing,  in  French  phrase,  "  leaps  to  the  eyes "  more 
saliently  and  vividly,  upon  any  reading  of  Charlotte  Bronte's 
novels  and  letters,  than  her  entire  sincerity  of  mind  and 
spirit,  of  imagination  and  thought.  Her  splendours  and 
her  absurdities,  her  loves  and  her  hates,  are  absolutely  her 
own,  unborrowed  from  the  influences  of  culture,  of  society, 
of  the  Welfgeisf.  She  admirably  exemplifies  Mr.  Ruskin's 
saying,  that  genius  consists,  not  in  originality  but  rather  in 
genuineness :  in  that  supreme  conviction  of  the  artist  that 
his  work  must  be  done  in  this  and  in  no  other  way ;  in  the 
feeling  that  faithfully  and  fearlessly  to  execute  his  own 
conception  is  to  obey  a  divine  command,  the  will  of  eternal 
beauty  and  truth.  Charlotte  Bronte  knew  to  the  full  how 
the  artist  both  masters  and  is  mastered  by  his  art,  and  that 
in  the  very  act  of  creation  there  seems  to  be,  and  is, 
a  "something  not  himself  making  for  righteousness,"  for 
artistic  Tightness  and  justice.     So  she  writes  to  Lewes  : — 

"When  authors  write  best,  or,  at  least,  when  they  write  most 
fluently,  an  influence  seems  to  waken  in  them,  which  becomes  their 
master,  which  will  have  its  own  way,  putting  out  of  view  all  behests 
but  its  own,  dictating  certain  words,  and  insisting  on  their  being  used, 
whether  vehement  or  measured  in  their  nature  ;  new-moulding  cha- 
racters, giving  unthought-of  turns  to  incidents,  rejecting  carefully 
elaborated  old  ideas,  and  suddenly  creating  and  adopting  new  ones. 
Is  it  not  so  ?  And  should  we  try  to  counteract  this  influence  ?  Can 
we,  indeed,  counteract  it  ?  " 

When  a  sovereign  of  men  objected  to  a  sovereign  of  music, 
that  there  were  too  many  notes  in  a  certain  passage,  the 
answer  was  :  "  Sire,  there  are  just  the  right  number."  That 
was  the  kind  of  reply  that  Charlotte  Bronte  made  to  her 
critics :  "  It  happened  so,  and  not  otherwise.  I  saw  it, 
heard  it,  and  refuse  to  lie  about  it."  The  world  of  her 
imagination  was  terra  firma,  not  any  Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, 
wherein  anything  may  happen  anyhow.  She  was  capable 
of  writing  to  her  friends,  as  Balzac  wrote  to  his,  news  of 


46  POST   LIMINIUM 

her  imagined  characters  and  creatures :  "  Do  you  know 
that  So-and-So  is  dead ;  Such-an-One  married  ?  Is  it  not 
wonderful  ?  "  At  the  date  of  Villette  she  had  not  read  the 
mighty  Frenchman;  but  Harriet  Martineau  discerned  in 
that  glorious  masterpiece  an  affinity  with  his  genius.  It 
Ues  in  a  common  passion  of  reahty,  conviction,  belief  in 
their  creations :  both  writers  make  an  "  act  of  faith "  in 
their  imaginations.  The  shy,  strong  woman  whom,  in  her 
circumstances  and  in  her  character,  we  might  almost  call 
the  nun  of  English  literature  (if  the  title  did  not  belong  of 
right  to  Miss  Rossetti),  vowed  obedience  to  the  precepts 
of  her  art,  faithful  in  the  letter  and  in  the  spirit,  resigned  to 
her  own  inspiration.  She  could  not  have  written  what  Walt 
Whitman  calls  "books  distilled  from  books."  She  wrote 
books  distilled  from  life,  from  personal  intuition,  from  the 
intimations  of  the  spirit,  from  the  voices  and  the  silences 
of  nature,  from  acquaintance  with  grief,  from  an  impassioned 
pondering.  Her  writings, — we  do  not  say  it  wholly  for  praise ! 
have  little  savour  of  libraries,  little  air  of  moral  purpose, 
little  suggestion  of  "  the  literary  life."  But  in  all  that  she 
wrote,  whether  novels  or  letters,  there  is  a  wealth  of  words 
which,  "if  you  cut  them,  would  bleed"  :  words  vital,  sen- 
sitive :  not  dead,  but  "  quick." 

.  .  .  An  enchanting,  an  invigorating  freshness,  an  incom- 
parable vividness,  distinguished  her  life,  her  letters,  her 
novels  :  fruits  of  that  unsophisticated  sincerity.  She  might 
err  or  stumble  through  ignorance  or  through  prejudice, 
from  inexperience  in  fact  or  from  limitation  of  view,  but 
never  at  any  conscious  sacrifice  of  truth.  When,  to  her 
measureless  amazement,  she  found  herself  here  and  there 
accused,  even  by  friends,  of  an  unwomanly  "  coarseness," 
she  took  no  public  heed ;  she  altered  nothing ;  she  held  on 
her  way,  she  obeyed  the  daimon  within  her.  Infinitely 
characteristic  is  the  last  page  of  her  masterpiece,  Villette. 
Her  father  pleaded  for  an  "  happy  ending ; "  he  could  not 
endure   the   thought,   nor  face   the  fact, — who   can  ? — of 


CHARLOTTE    BRONTE    AND    HER   CHAMPION  47 

M.  Paul  Emanuel's  death.  Miss  Bronte  knew,  we  all  knov/ 
in  our  hearts,  that  he  did  die  and  must  have  died ;  but,  to 
meet  her  father's  touching  desire  halfway,  she  affected  to 
leave  it  an  open  question.  Definitely  bring  the  little,  im- 
perious, and  adorable  lover  safe  home  from  sea  to  Lucy 
Snowe  and  marriage,  she  would  not :  that  was  an  artistic 
outrage,  a  falsehood  to  fact.  But  the  sentimentalist  is 
allowed  to  believe  it,  if  he  can  and  will.  She  had  faced 
tragedy  and  walked  with  sorrow ;  she  had  known  the  special 
pang  of  desideriiwi,  of  the  vain  backward  look  that  rests 
wistfully  upon  graves.  With  all  her  quietness,  shyness, 
seclusiveness,  she  was  the  bravest  of  women  in  things  of 
the  spirit ;  she  could  be  stern  to  herself,  to  her  art,  and 
contemptuous  to  the  deserving  of  contempt.  Her  writings 
and  herself  take  a  proud  delight  in  the  purity  of  passion, 
in  the  indomitable  courage  of  high  emotion.  That  singular 
and  pathetic  artist,  the  late  James  Smetham,  writes  thus,  in 
a  letter  too  long  for  full  quotation,  concerning  the  Bronte 
novels  : — 

"They  are, — Currer  Bell's  particularly— so  far  autobiographic  that 
one  looks  on  them  to  be  important  -revelations  of  a  life  that  has  been 
lived,  and  of  thoughts  that  have  been  thought  ;  no  frivolous,  unworthy, 
ambitious  life  either,  but  something  pure,  strong,  deep,  tender,  true, 
and  reverential ;  something  that  teaches  one  how  to  live.  I  know  this, 
that  I  perceive  principles  and  motives  and  purposes  nobler  than  my 
own  in  several  aspects  of  that  quiet,  shy,  observant,  and  yet  powerful 
nature  which  calls  itself  'Jane  Eyre'  and  'Lucy  Snowe,'  and  hovers 
over  '  Shirley  '  and  '  Caroline  Helstone '  as  their  presiding  genius  and 
instinct." 

These  words  of  the  strange  artist,  Methodist  and  Pre- 
Raphaelite,  were  written  before  the  publication  of  Mrs. 
Gaskell's  work  :  they  show  to  perfection  how  faithful  to  her 
own  self  was  this  writer  of  stories  which  some  critics  have 
called  crudities  and  caricatures.  What  she  thought,  felt, 
imagined,  had  for  her  the  authority  and  authenticity  of 
instant  vision.  Hence  her  marvellous  reality  :  just  so,  we 
say  of  her  scenes  and  portraits,  it  must  have  been.     The 


48  POST    LIMINIUM 

frequent  splendour  of  imaginative  expression  has  a  certain 
effect  of  literal,  simple  truth.  Mr.  Meredith  has  pointed  to 
her  description  of  Rachel  upon  the  stage  as  an  example 
of  English  prose  at  the  highest :  and  it  is  superb  in  phrase 
and  movement,  a  prose  both  lyrical  and  majestic.  Yet  we 
read  it  as  no  conscious  piece  of  purple  writing,  but  as 
Charlotte  Bronte's  instantaneous,  inevitable,  indehble 
impression  of  the  terrible  actress.  Life  came  to  her  so  :  of 
all  strenuous  writers,  she  can  least  be  accused  of  straining  the 
note,  of  lashing  style  into  a  rapture,  of  cudgelling  the  brains 
of  sublimity.  She  was  careful  to  fit  and  harmonise  her 
words  with  her  perceptions,  but  the  result  is  always  beautiful 
accuracy  and  not  rhetoric.  Her  rare  sense  of  humour  saved 
her  from  extravagance ;  and  though  Jam  Eyre  owes  its 
chief  faults  to  a  certain  deficiency  of  this  preserving  quality, 
humour  is  radiant  in  Shirley  and  glorious  in  Villette. 

In  one  sense,  Mrs.  Gaskell,  being  a  woman  of  genuis, 
could  hardly  have  failed  to  write  a  masterpiece  ;  she  had  to 
deal  with  unique  creatures,  unique  creations.  The  element 
of  strangeness  is  in  them  all ;  and  the  Bronte  books,  like 
their  writers,  seem  to  stand  apart  in  a  kind  of  proudly 
contented  loneliness.  "  Take  us  or  leave  us,"  they  seem  to 
say  :  the  five  great  books,  like  the  two  great  writers,  at  once 
fascinate  or  at  once  repel.  But  so  far  as  it  is  possible  to 
educate  and  beguile  readers  into  loving  them,  Mrs.  Gaskell's 
work  achieves  the  possibility.  Brilliant  critics  have  dis- 
played their  merits,  patient  chroniclers  have  explored  the 
Bronte  story  :  but  all  these  are  as  nothing  beside  the  first 
great  champion  of  Charlotte  Bronte  and  her  fame,  the  first 
gracious  and  delicate  historian  of  her  line  and  family,  the 
first  recorder  of  those  lives  finely  lived,  the  first  to  build 
over  those  sisters  of  sorrow  a  monument  worthy  of  them- 
selves. Inseparable  from  the  high  names  of  Charlotte  and 
Emily  Bronte  is  the  name  of  Elizabeth  Gaskell,  who  devoted 
to  their  service  all  the  cunning  and  all  the  patience  of  her 
"  sweet  and  noble  genius."  .  .  . 


CHARLOTTE    BRONTK    AND    HER    CHAMPION  49 

And  the  paramount  interest  of  those  lives,  which  Mrs. 
Gaskell's  patient  skill  was  the  first  instrument  in  reveaUng 
to   the  world,  lies  in  the   fact   that,  though  they  reveal  a 
tragedy,  a  story  of  sorrows,  there  is  nothing  of  that  pitiful- 
ness  so  often  attaching  to  the  literature  of  literary  mourners. 
The  case  of  the   disastrous   Branwell   excepted,  here   are 
noble  griefs  nobly  borne  ;   fears  stoically  confronted ;    dis- 
appointments met  with  redoubled  endeavour :    nowhere  a 
touch   of  Wertherism,   an   hint   of  Byronism.      We   have 
nothing  to  forgive,  palliate,  condone,  excuse,  explain  away 
in  Charlotte  Bronte.    We  have  never  cause  to  say  :  "  Here  is 
weakness,  and  here  is  vanity,  and  here  is  malice,  but  they 
are   natural   and   pardonable."      These   writers   of    books 
quivering  and  aching  with  passion,  lived  lives  of  unshakable 
fortitude,  and  of  integrity  not  less  mental  than  moral.     To 
use  a  somewhat  undignified  word,  there  was  no  flabbiness, 
no  pettiness  in  their  temperaments ;    and  even   Branwell, 
who  lived  like  an  hysterical  and  besottedly  vicious  woman, 
died  like  a  man,  upright  upon  his  feet,  as  the  death  agony 
seized  him.     A  brave  book,  this   of  Mrs.    Gaskell's:    the 
record  of  courageous  women,  true,  like  Jane  Eyre,  "  to  the 
finest   fibre"  of  their  natures.     We  close  it  with  renewed 
homage  to  the  memories  of  its  writer  and  of  them ;  close  it 
also  with  Arnold's  lines  in  memory  : 

"  Sleep,  O  cluster  of  friends, 
Sleep  !  or  only  when  May, 
Brought  by  the  west  wind,  returns 
Back  to  your  native  heaths, 
And  the  plover  is  heard  on  the  moors, 
Yearly  awake,  to  behold 
The  opening  summer,  the  skj-, 
The  shining  moorland  ;  to  hear 
The  drowsy  bee,  as  of  old, 
Hum  o'er  the  thyme,  the  grouse 
Call  from  the  heather  in  bloom  ! 
Sleep  ;  or  only  for  this 
Break  your  united  repose  !  " 


5©  POST    LIMINIUM 

Of  a  truth,  in  the  last  words  of  Wnthering  Heights,  we 
cannot  "  imagine  unquiet  slumbers  for  the  sleepers  in  that 
quiet  earth  " ;  and  they  had  earned  their  slumbers. 


SAVONAROLA 

[The  Academy,  Aug.  5,  1899;  The  Daily  Chronicle,  Sept.  14,  1901.] 
The  most  difficult  historical  characters  to  judge  are  those 
in  which  religion  is  a  moving  element,  present  in  all  their 
outward  acts.  It  is  easy  to  fling  about  such  terms  as 
enthusiast,  hypocrite,  fanatic,  impostor  :  human  nature  is 
seldom  so  simple  as  that.  Probably  the  most  absurd  and 
vulgar  and  revolting  of  religious  frauds  was  that  of  Joe 
Smith,  the  Mormon  Prophet ;  yet  it  is  impossible,  upon  a 
minute  study  of  his  amazing  career,  not  to  see  that  he 
half-deceived  himself  by  his  own  lies,  and  was  willing  to 
die  for  them  devotedly.  Or,  turning  from  low  things  to 
higher,  no  one  now  thinks  Oliver  Cromwell's  a  transparent 
character  to  read.  All  those  wrestlings  and  writhings 
with  the  Lord,  those  bursts  and  snatches  of  struggling 
speech,  as  of  a  man  talking  in  his  sleep  or  thinking  aloud 
in  fitful  soliloquy, — they  show  neither  the  manifest  hypo- 
crite nor  the  passionate  idealist,  but  a  pathetic  mixture  of 
both.  The  King's  death :  must  he,  ought  he,  to  bring 
that  about?  The  crown  :  should  he  accept  or  refuse?  Is 
he,  indeed,  the  Lord's  Anointed,  girt  with  the  sword  of 
the  Lord  ?  Has  he  verily  an  appointed  work  in  England  ? 
He  "  waits  upon  the  Lord  "  for  answer,  half  of  him  filled 
with  uncouth  prayer  and  prophecy,  the  other  with  a  keen 
political  intelligence  and  worldly  insight.  And  few  famous 
men  have  more  perplexed  their  contemporaries  and  pos- 
terity than  Fra  Girolamo  Savonarola,  son  of  Ferrara, 
prophet  of  Florence.  He  has  been  the  theme  of  almost 
innumerable  books,  in  which  he  figures  as  hero,  humbug, 
martyr,  apostate,  illustrious  saint,  and  melancholy  example. 


SAVONAROLA  5 1 

His  portrait  has  adorned  the  chambers  of  Popes ;  his  statue 
stands  beside  that  of  Luther  at  Worms.  Anti-clerical 
Italy  claims  him  one  of  her  champions ;  clerical  Italy  has 
longed  for  his  canonisation.  Machiavelli  saw  in  him  but 
a  political  intriguer  ;  St.  Philip  Neri,  a  burning  servant  of 
God.  "  Do  I  contradict  myself  ?  Very  well,  then  !  I  con- 
tradict myself."  By  his  own  Florentines  he  was  idolised 
and  execrated,  killed,  and  to  this  day  venerated.  .  .  . 

"  From  the  Church  Militant  and  Triumphant  we 
sever  thee."  "  Nay !  from  the  Church  Triumphant  thou 
canst  not ! "  So,  in  the  last  public  utterances  of  the  great 
and  terrible  voice,  Savonarola,  stripped  of  the  noble 
Dominican  habit,  replied  to  the  presiding  prelate.  One 
word  more,  but  in  gentle  soliloquy,  as  he  stood  beside 
the  instruments  of  death,  the  hanging  chains  and  the 
faggots :  "  My  Lord  has  suffered  as  much  for  me."  A 
movement  of  the  hand  in  benediction,  and  then  the  end, 
when,  in  the  words  of  an  English  poet  who  also  sleeps  in 
Florence,  "  Savonarola's  soul  went  out  in  fire,"  to  be  with 
Dominic  and  Dante.  Human  stupidity  had  achieved  its 
latest  triumph,  to  make  the  angels  weep.  Many  in  Florence 
there  must  have  been  who  were  afraid  of  the  dark  that 
night :  who  heard  through  it  the  thunder  of  a  silenced 
voice,  and  saw  through  it  the  lightning  of  closed  eyes. 
Others,  perhaps  most,  may  have  turned  to  their  sleep, 
murmuring  the  Tuscan  equivalent  of  "  His  own  fault,  after 
all :  now  we  shall  have  some  peace  and  quietness." 

Upon  May  23,  in  the  year  1498,  in  the  Piazza  della 
Signoria,  that  tragedy  was  performed.  Upon  the  same 
day  of  this  present  year,  and  upon  the  same  scene  of  his 
martyrdom  and  judicial  murder,  the  atoning  people  of  his 
Florence  dedicated  a  memorial  to  Savonarola,  "  unjustly 
slain."  The  City  of  the  Lilies,  which  sentenced  exiled 
Dante  to  the  flames,  and  gave  to  them  her  prophet  of 
righteousness  and  judgment  to  come,  has  had  more  atone- 
ment to  make  than  one.     But  her   mind   has  long   been 


52  POST   LIMINIUM 

made  up  concerning  Savonarola :  it  is  with  an  effort  that 
she  thinks  of  him  as  a  man  of  Ferrara,  as  not  a  native 
Florentine.  The  voice  which  mourned  and  cried  aloud 
over  the  sins  of  Florence,  as  Cacciaguida  mourned  to 
Dante  in  the  Paradise,  is  the  voice  of  no  alien  in  that  city's 
ears.  And  the  world  has  canonised  him  in  its  catalogue  of 
the  great  and  tragic  :  it  says  various  things  of  him,  but 
they  are  few  who  have  judged  him  harshly.  .  .  . 

It  may  be  thought  that  Savonarola  hasbeen  more  fortunate 
in  his  biographies  than  in  his  presentment  and  interpretation 
in  imaginative  literature.  The  chief  attempt  at  such  a 
treatment,  George  EUot's,  is  a  splendid  failure,  strenuous, 
full  of  zeal  and  effort,  often  within  sight  of  a  success  never 
attained.  Two  great  writers,  one  in  youth,  one  in  old  age, 
projected  works  upon  Savonarola  :  Gibbon,  who  planned 
a  history  of  Florence  under  the  Medici,  naturally  embracing 
a  special  study  of  Savonarola's  "  character  and  fall " ; 
Tennyson,  who  meditated  a  poem  upon  his  death.  We 
may  imagine  the  character  of  either  portrait :  Gibbon's, 
with  its  eighteenth-century  hatred  of  "enthusiasm,"  his 
lack  of  spiritual  sympathies,  his  scholar's  impatience  of 
extremes,  yet  with  a  purple  splendour  of  handling  too; 
Tennyson's,  laying  stress  upon  the  opponent  of  corrupt 
authority,  valiant  unto  death,  but  depicting  an  Englishman 
rather  than  an  Italian.  More  precious,  probably,  than 
either  of  these  w^ould  be  the  portrait  that  Carlyle  could 
have  given  us  to  set  beside  his  lovely  and  stern  etching 
of  Dante.  For  Dante  and  Savonarola  are  brother  souls, 
and  show  it  even  in  their  faces  :  and  Dante,  lord  of  the 
brief  and  unforgettable  phrase,  could  he  have  written  of 
Savonarola,  would  have  done  it  imperishably,  once  and 
for  ever.  As  it  is,  we  may  well  fall  back  upon  his  praise 
of  Dominic,  and  apply  it  to  Dominic's  son  in  religion  : — 

"  L'amoroso  drudo 
Delia  fede  cristiana,  il  santo  atleta, 
Benigno  ai  suoi,  ed  ai  namici  crudo." 


SAVONAROLA  53 

"  A  very  wonderful  man,  you  will  allow,  my  brethren,  was 
this  Savonarola,"  says  Cardinal  Newman,  who  adds,  con- 
trasting him  with  the  Apostle  of  Rome,  Saint  Philip  Neri  : 
"  for  years  he  had  his  own  way ;  at  length  his  innocence, 
sincerity  and  zeal  were  the  ruin  of  his  humility."  That 
may  be  the  truth  :  and  yet,  it  may  be  to  "  consider  "  not 
"curiously"  enough,  "to  consider  so."  For  we  find  in 
Savonarola  no  personal  pride  or  self-seeking,  no  obstinate 
advocacy  of  condemned  views  or  rash  opinions  :  we  find 
throughout  his  career  one  consuming  passion  for  the  puri- 
fication, not  of  the  Church  in  her  faith  and  organic  struc- 
ture, which  he  upheld  to  the  full,  but  of  the  world  which 
professed  to  walk  in  that  faith.  At  the  height  of  his  in- 
fluence over  Florence  was  placed  upon  the  Plazzo  della 
Signoria  the  inscription  :  Jestis  Christiis  Popiill  Florentini 
Rex  :  no  Scottish  Covenanter,  no  Puritan  of  New  England, 
no  frenzied  Anabaptist  of  Miinster  believed  more  abso- 
lutely in  that  supreme  and  indivisible  kingship.  "  Not," 
says  Mr.  Morley,  writing  of  Machiavelli,  "  not  for  the 
ambitious  and  practical  politician  was  the  choice  of 
Savonarola,  who,  at  the  moment  when  Machiavelli  was 
crossing  the  threshold  of  public  life,  had  perished  at  the 
stake  rather  than  cease  from  his  warnings  that  no  good 
would  come  to  Florence  save  from  the  fear  of  God  and  the 
reform  of  manners.  .  .  ."  Yes :  he  was  on  fire  with  a 
zeal  for  the  reform  of  morals  in  Italy  ;  of  general  morality, 
as  the  principle  of  Christian  states  and  communities  :  this, 
in  strict  conformity  with  the  Catholic  faith  in  which  he 
recognised  the  perfection  of  revealed  religious  truth,  and 
nothing  in  need  of  reform.  He  conceived  of  his  mission 
as  not  directed  to  the  patient  conversion  and  reclamation 
of  individual  souls,  but  to  a  universal  awakening  of  whole 
cities  and  territories,  through  the  power  of  divine  speech 
wherewith  he  believed  himself  inspired.  Dante,  that 
infinitely  lonely  man,  dreamed  much  the  same  dream  of  a 
regenerate  Italy,  Florence,  Rome ;  he,  too,  scourged  popes 


54 


POST   LIMINIUM 


and  priests,  though  never  papacy  and  priesthood ;  but  the 
wandering  exiled  layman  was  more  of  a  recluse  than  the 
cloistered  cleric.  Savonarola,  from  the  pulpits  of  San 
IMarco  and  the  Duomo,  yearned  to  turn  his  dream  into  a 
reality :  his  was  vox  dama7itis,  not  in  deserto,  but  in  plena 
nrbe.  An  age  of  luxurious  corruption,  renascent  paganism, 
hideous  crime  and  moral  laxity;  Christian  upon  the 
surface,  indifferent  or  superstitious  within ;  resplendent  with 
gorgeous  vanities  and  cunning  inventions  and  exquisite 
arts  ; — such,  to  Savonarola,  seemed  the  enemy  assigned  to 
the  sword  of  his  word.  "  Thunders  of  thought  and 
flames  of  fierce  desire"  surged  through  his  soul;  after 
a  time,  and  for  a  time,  he  triumphed.  Sacred  oratory, 
able  to  inspire  Michael  Angelo  at  work  upon  the  Sistine 
Chapel,  thrilled  Florence,  and  threw  multitudes  prostrate 
at  his  feet ;  he  found  himself  ruling  where  Lorenzo  de' 
Medici  had  ruled ;  and  it  is  clear  that  success  overstrained 
his  sober  reason ;  that  he  should  have  set  up  a  reign  of 
righteousness,  abased  the  pomps  of  sin,  purged  the  vicious 
and  distracted  Florence,  marked  him  surely  for  a  prophet 
whose  utterance  was  that  of  God  !  His  earlier  preaching 
was  full  of  fiery  apocalyptic  warnings,  of  vehement  appeals 
to  Church  and  State,  of  sternest  denunciation  and  pathetic 
entreaty ;  but  from  that  he  passed  to  a  perilous  conviction 
of  his  prophetic  insight  into  the  immediate  politics  of  the 
day,  his  divinely-given  right  to  inspire  and  direct  the 
policy  of  Florence,  to  defy  authority  in  the  name  of  higher 
authority.  "  If  Rome  be  against  me,  know  that  she  is 
not  against  me,  but  Christ," — words  unconsciously  echoed 
by  Pascal :  "  If  my  writings  are  condemned  at  Rome,  they 
are  approved  in  Heaven." 

.  .  .  Vainly  has  the  endeavour  been  made  to  make  Savon- 
arola out  a  successor  of  Wiclif,  a  precursor  of  Luther ;  as 
Mr.  Horsburgh  well  puts  it,  he  is  to  be  classed  with  "  pre- 
Reformation  reformers,  such  as  Colet,  More,  and  Erasmus." 
His  worst  antagonist  can    bring  against  him  no  graver 


SAVONAROLA  55 

accusation,  as  a  Catholic,  than  that  of  technical  disobedience 
to  the  reigning  Pope,  and  a  certain  reluctance,  almost  from 
the  first,  to  submit  his  personal  claims  and  convictions  to 
authority  which  he  acknowledged  to  the  full.  Filled  as  he 
was  with  the  consciousness  of  a  prophetical  mission  directly 
entrusted  to  him  by  God,  he  never,  when  checked  or 
hindered,  thought  of  creating  a  schism,  a  new  departure, 
justifiable  in  his  own  eyes  and  conscience.  John  Wesley, 
devoted  to  the  English  Church,  at  last  started  another 
organisation ;  Edward  Irving,  a  far  greater  man,  shook  the 
dust  of  Scottish  Presbyterianism  from  off  his  feet,  in  the 
"thrice  holy  name  of  God."  But  Savonarola  lived  and 
died  a  Roman  Catholic  who  had  no  difficulty  in  saying  to 
Pope  Alexander  Borgia :  "  Your  Holiness  holds  the  place 
of  God  on  earth."  The  Church  has  pronounced  that 
Savonarola's  writings  contain  ////  censnra  dignum  ;  no  such 
ecclesiastical  thunderbolts  as  "  temerarious,  erroneous, 
pernicious,  scandalous,  damnable,"  have  been  discharged 
upon  any  utterance  of  his. 

Cardinal  Newman,  in  his  famous  Letter  to  the  Duke  of 
Norfolk,  explaining  the  prerogative  and  the  supremacy  of 
conscience,  declared  that  if  called  upon  to  drink  to  conscience 
and  the  Pope,  he  would  toast  conscience  first.  It  was  far 
more  that  conviction  of  mind  and  soul  which  brought 
Savonarola  to  his  violent  death  than  any  want  of  humility. 
Perhaps  the  truest  type  of  priest  and  prophet  who  falls 
through  pride,  is  the  melancholy  Lamennais;  "the  great 
heresiarch,"  as  Montalembert  calls  him ;  "  one  of  the 
prophets  of  old,"  as  Mazzini  prefers  to  say.  Part  of  our 
difficulty  or  perplexity  in  viewing  Savonarola  aright  is 
inherent  in  the  nature  of  his  time  and  land,  in  the  tangle  of 
Italian  politics,  which  Dante  had  known  to  his  undoing,  in 
the  anomalous  morals  of  the  Renaissance  age,  in  the 
intricacies  surrounding  and  baffling  the  reformer.  Had 
Savonarola  lived  the  life  of  the  itinerant  preacher,  passing 
from  city  to  city  with  his  message  of  appeal  to  the  hearts 


56  POST    LIMINIUM 

and  consciences  of  men,  but  holding  himself  apart  from  the 
actual  operation  of  States  and  governments,  he  would  have 
died  on  his  bed  with  none  but  friends  about  him.  His 
chosen  work  was  harder  and  nobler :  to  make  of  one  Italian 
city  a  city  of  God,  a  holy  commonwealth,  through  the 
faithful  practice  of  Christianity  in  all  the  provinces  of  life. 
The  aim  of  Lorenzo  de'  Medici  was  not  ignoble,  but  it  was 
not  that.  Inevitably,  Savonarola  had  his  enemies,  his 
mockers,  his  slanderers,  and  those  who  bade  him  back  to 
his  cloister  and  leave  matters  of  government  to  men  of  the 
world :  Savonarola,  impetuous,  impatient,  no  easy  man  to 
deal  with !  How  was  your  shrewd,  money-making,  not 
over-scrupulous  citizen  to  sympathise  with  an  idealist 
Boanerges,  who  meddled  with  everything  in  the  name  of 
Christ?  The  very  intensity  of  spiritual  fire  and  passion 
kindled  from  the  pulpit  of  San  Marco,  as  that  surging  voice 
rolled  over  the  massed  multitude,  had  its  dangers.  A  great 
saint  has  defined  the  perfect  spiritual  state  as  that  of  doing 
the  commonest  things  in  the  best  possible  way ;  Savonarola's 
ecstatic  oratory,  with  its  prophecies  and  visions,  can  hardly 
have  conduced  to  that  perfection.  And  yet  the  orator 
himself  was  a  man  of  strong  intellect  and  common  sense, 
one  to  be  reckoned  with  in  practical  affairs ;  no  mere  "  hot 
gospeller,"  whose  chief  effect  is  to  throw  a  crowd  into 
devout  hysterics.  But  the  sublimity  and  simplicity  of  his 
ideal  may  have  worked  harm  as  well  as  good.  "  The  zeal 
of  Thine  house  hath  eaten  me  up"  is  a  motto  which 
has  led  men  into  perilous  places.  In  Florence  of  the 
Renaissance,  single-heartedness  of  purpose  had  a  host  of 
obstacles  to  encounter,  and  the  indomitable  Dominican 
must  have  known  them  all.  He  cared  nothing :  in  truth, 
it  is  hard  to  imagine  a  cowardly  Dominican.  He  was  no 
pestilent  obscurantist,  sworn  foe  to  classic  literature  and  the 
revival  of  art :  read  carefully  his  extant  works,  and  you  will 
see  that  he  was  a  man  of  sensitive  taste,  who  drew  a  line 
between  artistic  licence  and  artistic  liberty.     No  one  who 


SAVOXAROLA  57 

has  realised  the  moral  degradation  of  his  times,  will 
reproach  Savonarola  upon  the  score  of  vandalism  in  his 
famous  "  Bonfire  of  Vanities."  Those  were  times  in  which 
learned  men,  outwardly  decorous  and  decent,  wrote  things 
in  the  name  of  learning  which  have  no  iniquitous  parallel 
in  the  days  of  Catullus  or  Martial.  And  the  man's  huge 
heart,  sick  at  these  abominations,  boiled  over  with  holy 
rage :  he  felt  that  at  any  moment  fire  from  heaven  might 
descend  to  the  destruction  of  such  an  age.  Little  blame  to 
him  if,  consumed  at  heart  with  a  vast  and  sacred  indigna- 
tion, he  strayed  beyond  the  strait  bounds  of  ecclesiastical 
sobriety ;  little  blame  if,  lover  as  he  was  of  literature  and 
art,  he  was  sometimes  narrow  and  over-puritanical  in  his 
views.  With  Alexander  Borgia  in  the  Chair  of  Peter,  the 
very  air  seemed  heavy  and  tainted  with  voluptuousness. 
But  he  was  no  fanatical  enemy  of  beautiful  culture,  who 
numbered  among  his  friends  such  men  as  Pico  della 
Mirandola,  Sandro  BotticeUi,  and  the  Della  Robbias.  He 
did  but  place  above  all  other  excellences  that  of  holy 
living.  A  massive  man  of  impassioned  simplicity,  with 
something  of  an  antique  Roman  worthy  in  the  large  out- 
lines of  his  character :  not  subtle  nor  supple,  but  lofty  and 
direct,  he  excites  in  us  almost  as  much  pity  as  admiration 
and  awe  :  he  meant  so  simply  and  so  well,  his  failure  was  so 
perfect !  .  .  .  They  hanged  him,  they  burned  him  :  it  stands 
out  as  one  of  the  world's  central  tragedies  ;  it  is  among  the 
most  pathetically  stupid  of  historical  facts,  this  slaying  of 
Savonarola.  He  was  killed  by  the  complicated  and  in- 
significant politics  of  the  Italian  States  in  the  fifteenth 
century  :  for  nothing  diabolically  heroic,  like  atheism,  but 
for  being  politically  in  the  way.  ..."  Power,"  says  George 
Eliot,  "  rose  against  him  not  because  of  his  sins,  but  because 
of  his  greatness :  not  because  he  sought  to  deceive  the 
world,  but  because  he  sought  to  make  it  noble."  Perhaps, 
at  the  last,  there  may  have  crossed  his  mind  those  mourn- 
fullest  of  words:  '■''  Fopule  meus^  quid  feci  tibil  aut  in  quo 


58  POST  LIMINIUM 

contristavi  tel    Responde    mihi.      Quia  eduxi  te  de  terra 
^gypti,  parasti  crucem  salvatori  tuo." 

Many  who  have  never  known  him  would  be  the  better 
for  keeping  the  company  of  this  "  soldier-saint"  Defeated 
he  was,  and  put  to  a  savage  death ;  but  as  Walt  Whitman 
has  told  us,  there  are  times  when  "  death  and  defeat  are 
great."  They  were  great  when,  from  his  swift  agony,  the 
white  soul  of  Girolamo  Savonarola  flashed  forth,  and 
ascended  into  the  immediate  presence  of  his  Master, 
Jesus  Chrisius  Poptili  Florentini  Rex, 


LUCRETIUS   AND   OMAR 

[The  Academy,  July  14,  1900.] 

"  Lucretius,"  writes  Mr.  Sellar  in  his  admirable  chapters 
upon  the  poet,  "contemplates  human  life  with  a  profound 
feeling  like  that  of  Pascal,  and  with  a  speculative  elevation 
like  that  of  Spinoza.  The  loftier  tones  of  his  poetry,  and 
the  sustained  effort  of  mind  which  bears  him  through  his 
long  argument,  remind  us  of  Milton."  These  are  just  com- 
parisons. We  might  add  Dante  :  he  also  could  vaunt,  with 
a  prii7ms  ego,  that  he,  first  of  Italian  poets,  had  handled 
mightily  a  most  majestic  theme.  But  between  him  who, 
in  Mrs.  Browning's  phrase, 

" — denied 
Divinely  the  divine,  and  died 
Chief  poet  by  the  Tiber  side," 

and  the  Persian  with  his  roses  and  vines,  nightingales  and 
wine-cups,  how  vast  the  distance  and  the  difference !  Mr. 
Mallock  *  is  aware  of  it ;  but  he  finds  a  certain  piquancy 
in  the  comparing  and  contrasting  of  the  two  Epicurean 

*  Lucretius  on  Life  and  Death.  In  the  Metre  of  Omar  Khayyam. 
To  which  are  appended  parallel  passages  from  the  original.  By  W.  H. 
Mallock.     (A.  &  C.  Black,  1900.) 


LUCRETIUS   AND   OMAR  59 

poets,  and  has  paraphrased  some  five  hundred  lines  of  the 
Roman  in  the  famous  stanza  devised  by  FitzGerald  for  the 
paraphrase  of  the  Persian.  The  result  is  fascinating,  and 
a  failure :  to  paraphrase  Bentley  upon  Pope's  Homer,  "  a 
very  pretty  poem,  Mr.  Mallock,  but  you  must  not  call  it 
Lucretius."  Imagine  Omar  rendered  into  Miltonic  blank 
verse,  and  you  have  some  notion  of  the  aspect  of  Lucretius 
in  the  Omarian  quatrain.  The  tripping,  discontinuous, 
epigrammatic  quatrains  have  nothing  in  common  with  the 
slow-labouring,  lingering  thunders  of  the  Lucretian  periods, 
each  line  a  triumph  of  tremendous  music,  and  the  complete 
period  their  concerted  harmony.  Mr.  Mallock's  bold 
venture  is  an  excellent  illustration  of  the  interdependence 
of  matter  and  form  :  translated  into  a  poem  absolutely 
unlike  his  own,  even  the  thought  of  Lucretius,  the  genius 
of  his  mind,  almost  wholly  disappears.  Thus  translated, 
he  is  not  himself;  he  is  any  one  of  the  countless  poets 
who  sing  of  the  eternity  of  death  and  the  sorrow  of  life : 
we  might  almost  be  reading  Horace.  The  essential  quality 
of  the  RtLbdiydf,  in  point  of  form,  is  a  swift  brevity.  The 
poet  lets  fall  a  stanza  now,  a  stanza  then,  each  isolated, 
self-sufficient,  perfect ;  strung  together,  they  are  but  a  chain 
of  variations  upon  the  same  theme.  There  is  no  laborious 
argument,  no  philosophic  plan,  no  systematic  unfolding  of 
a  scheme  of  thought.  It  is  philosophy  in  snatches  of  song, 
doctrine  by  epigram,  dropped  casually  with  a  charming 
nonchalance  from  the  lips  of  a  semi-serious  epicurean 
mystic,  unconscious  of  responsibiHty,  incapable  of  huge 
toil.  Lucretius  is  as  profoundly  and  passionately  an  apostle 
and  evangelist  as  Saint  Paul ;  his  is  no  light-hearted  pessi- 
mism, no  carolling  agnosticism,  but  an  elemental  message 
to  the  sons  of  men.  Open  Omar  at  any  page,  and  you  will 
light  upon  some  immediately  intelligible  stanza  about  the 
Why  and  the  Whither  and  the  Wherefore  of  things  :  open 
Lucretius  at  random,  and  you  will  find  yourself  in  the 
midst  of  some  long  and  wrestling  argument  or  exposition. 


6o  POST    LIMINIUM 

Before  Lucretius  can  chaunt  that  transcendant  chaunt  to 
the  glory  of  deathless  death,  Nil  igitur  mors  est,  and  do 
so  in  a  prolonged  strain  of  sublimity  unsurpassed,  he  must 
patiently  adduce  some  score  of  reasons,  worked  out  with 
enormous  effort,  in  which  beauty  of  form  is  sacrificed  to 
accuracy  of  matter.  No  poem  in  the  world  so  impresses 
us  as  accomplished  with  groans  and  sweat  of  the  brow, 
with  the  agony  and  strong  crying  of  birth-pangs,  as  the 
De  Natura  Renim  :  which,  truly  interpreted,  means  the 
Universe.  Little, — no,  to  be  accurate,  nothing — as  we 
know  of  Lucretius  with  absolute  certainty  from  external 
sources,  we  can  with  some  confidence  conjecture  much 
concerning  his  character  from  his  poem ;  and  we  may  feel 
sure  that  he  did  not  write  to  please  himself.  He  might 
have  enjoyed  his  solitary  broodings  and  contemplations  in 
a  somewhat  grim  silence ;  but,  thanks  to  Epicurus,  he 
possessed  the  pearl  of  great  price,  the  verity  of  verities, 
and  he  was  bound  to  communicate  it  to  a  world  lying  in 
the  darkness  of  superstitious  dread,  of  unnecessary  sorrow, 
of  calamitous  ignorance.  We  do  not  feel  that  about 
Omar;  he,  says  FitzGerald,  "only  diverted  himself  with 
speculative  problems  of  Deity,  Destiny,  Matter  and  Spirit, 
Good  and  Evil,  and  other  such  questions,  easier  to  start 
than  to  run  down,  and  the  pursuit  of  which  becomes  a  very 
weary  sport  at  last ! "  Omar  jests :  there  is  no  jesting  in 
Lucretius.  M.  ]\Iartha,  author  of  perhaps  the  best  work 
upon  Lucretius,  concludes  his  volume  thus :  "  La  veritable 
re/ytation  de  la  doctriftc  de  la  volupte  est  la  tristesse  de 
son  plus  grand  intcrpretc." 

Mr.  Mallock's  interesting  experiment  is,  then,  more 
curious  than  valuable  :  a  valorous  attempt  to  bridle  Behe- 
moth, to  put  a  hook  in  the  nostrils  of  Leviathan.  Passing 
over,  as  is  but  natural,  the  scientific  and  technical  portions 
of  the  poem,  and  merely  culling  from  it  its  "  beauties,"  he 
has  given  us  an  ingenious  pastiche  indeed,  but  done  a 
fanciful  injustice  to  the  Son  of  Thunder.     Mr.  Pater  has 


LUCRETIUS   AND   OMAR  6 1 

spoken  of  the  thunder  and  lightning  of  Lucretius  as  being 
"  like  thunder  and  hghtning  some  distance  off,  which  one 
might  recline  to  enjoy  in  a  garden  of  roses."     For  once  we 
venture  to  question  the  felicity  of  a  phrase  from  Mr.  Pater ; 
but  Mr.  Mallock  seems  to  have  accepted   it,  and  in  his 
version  we  read  Lucretius  in  the  rose-garden  of  Naishapur, 
beside  the  rose-besprinkled  tomb  of  Omar.     Little  is  here 
of  the  Lucretius  who,  as  illustrious  men  of  modern  science 
are  agreed,  marvellously  and  by  intuition  anticipated  im- 
portant doctrines  and  discoveries  of  modern  science;  of 
the  poet  who  rivals  Goethe  in  the  combination  of  scientific 
with  poetic  imagination.    Here  is  a  Roman  Omar,  strenuous 
and  impassioned ;  no  minstrel  of  smiling  nihilism,  but  the 
deliverer  of  a  vast  evangel,  the  prophet  of  the  peace  of 
eternal  death ;  a  preacher  akin  to  Thackeray's  "  weary  King 
Ecclesiast,"    "  the  sad  and  splendid."     All   is  vanity,  but 
kindly  death  ends  all,  says  Lucretius  :  Death  ends  all,  says 
Omar,  therefore  let  us  enjoy  life  to  the  uttermost,     Omar 
is  the  truer  Epicurean  :   Lucretius  has  more  than  a  little 
of  the   Stoic   in   his   temperament,   and   his   devotion   to 
Epicurus  was  less  upon  the  moral  or  practical  side  than 
upon  the  speculative.     Clearly,  he  hungered  after  an  in- 
terpretation  of    the   universe,    of    "all   this   unintelligible 
world " ;  he  found  it  in  the  atomic  theory,  as  accepted  by 
Epicurus  from  Democritus.     It  is  hard  to  say  whether  it 
be  right  to  call  him  atheist.      "  Un   graiide  poete  afkee" 
exclaims  Villemain,    "  voila  sans  doute  un  singnlier  phmo- 
mhte."     Certainly  few  conceptions  can  be  more  strikingly 
strange  than  his  picture  of  gods  who  reign,  perhaps,  but 
assuredly  do  not  govern :  idle  beings,  divine  drones  ex- 
traneous to  the  workings  of  the  world,  fixed  in  a  dreamy 
immobility  neither  beneficent  nor  malevolent,    not  worthy 
of  man's  consideration.   Such  gods  Lucretius  contemptuously 
condescends  to  let  exist ;  but  the  ruler  of  the  universe  is  a 
blind  necessity,  the  material  law.   The  religious  sense,  as  we 
understand  it  now,  was  no  part  of  his  nature ;  his  devotion, 


62  POST   LIMINIUM 

his  most  exalted  feeling,  is  called  forth  by  the  contemplation 
of  the  reign  of  physical  law  and  order,  stiaviter  fortiterque 
disponens  oftmia.  "  I  venerate  the  earnestness  of  the  man," 
writes  FitzGerald,  who  loved  him,  "and  the  power  with 
which  he  makes  some  music  even  from  his  hardest  Atoms." 
Can  we  say  of  Omar  that  we  "  venerate  his  earnestness  "  ? 
Melodiously  to  dwell  upon  the  melancholy  of  things  is  no 
hard  occupation,  and  the  philosophy  of  "  Gather  ye  roses 
while  ye  may  "  is  somewhat  obvious.  Critics  have  differed 
upon  the  quality  of  the  faith  that  was  in  Omar :  a  frank 
materialist  and  sensualist,  say  some;  a  mystic  veiling  the 
ineffable  truths  in  terms  of  earth,  say  others.  It  matters 
little,  and  both  views  may  be  right ;  certain  it  is  that  Omar 
was  a  true  Epicurean,  loving  life  and  its  brief  pleasures, 
the  sole  tangible  realities  in  a  mysterious  universe.  Un- 
like, indeed,  is  he  to  that  earlier  tent-maker  who  "  died 
daily"  to  this  present  world,  and  thirsted  for  that  other 
which  alone  was  real  to  him.  And  it  is  sure  that  Lucretius 
would  have  felt  slight  sympathy  with  the  prevailing  moods 
of  Omar,  the  dreamy  sadness,  indolent  wistfulness,  luxurious 
brooding  upon  the  nature  of  things.  Sad  as  Lucretius  is, 
he  has  the  air  of  boldly  and  stoutly  denying  it,  having  found 
peace  and  joy  in  believing  the  atomic  gospel,  and  trampled 
the  terrors  of  religion  beneath  his  feet :  '•'■felix  qid  pottut 
causes  cognoscere  rerum  !  " 

Mr.  Mallock  manages  with  much  dexterity  the  famous 
quatrain  :  for  example  : 

"  What  though  no  statued  youths  from  wall  and  wall 
Strew  light  along  your  midnight  festival 

With  golden  hands,  nor  beams  from  Lebanon 
Keep  the  lyre's  languor  lingering  through  the  hall, 

Yours  is  the  table  'neath  the  high  whispering  trees  ; 
Yours  is  the  lyre  of  leaf  and  stream  and  breeze  ; 
The  golden  flagon,  and  the  echoing  dome, — 
Lapped  in  the  Spring,  what  care  you  then  for  these?" 

Yet,  we  repeat  it,  this  is  no  measure  for  the  organ  music 


LUCRETIUS    AND    OMAR  63 

of  Lucretius :  he  would  sound  more  like  himself  in  the 
blank  verses  of  Milton,  the  heroics  of  Ben  Jonson,  Chap- 
man, Dryden,  the  Alexandrines  of  Hugo  or  Leconte  de 
Lisle.  Mr.  Mallock's  poem  is  pretty :  there  is  infinite 
beauty  in  Lucretius,  but  no  dancing  prettiness.  The 
terrible  intensity  of  his  marching  music  demands,  for  its 
transference  into  another  tongue,  the  weightiest  possible 
equivalent  to  the  gravitas,  the  audoritas  of  the  noble  Latin  : 
who  would  translate  Paradise  Lost  in  the  rhythms  of  Eniaux 
et  Camees,  or  the  Legende  des  Siecles  in  the  measures  of 
Jlesperides?  The  furor  arduus  Ltureti,  as  Statius  has 
it,  has  nothing  in  common  with  the  polished  or  chiselled 
elegance  of  Omar.  Lucretius  is  the  Michael  Angelo  of 
verse,  a  Titanic  workman,  compelling  language  to  obey 
his  sovereign  will  and  fall  into  majestic  cadence,  thunderous, 
oceanic.  Saint  Jerome,  in  a  sentence  which  has  distracted 
every  Lucretian  critic,  states  that  Lucretius  composed  his 
poem  in  the  lucid  intervals  of  insanity :  it  is  impossible. 
The  quatrains  of  Omar  might  have  been  so  written ;  the 
colossal  structure  of  the  De  Natura  Rerum  could  not  have 
been  so  designed  and  executed.  But  neither  the  classic 
Roman  nor  the  mediseval  Persian  was  mad;  both  kept  a 
steady  vision  upon  the  world  and  life,  both  knew  well  what 
they  were  doing.  Lucretius,  like  that  later  glory  of  Italy, 
the  lamenting  Leopardi,  had  sanity  in  the  deeps  of  his 
strange  soul,  and  the  mind  which  soared  and  ranged  beyond 
^e  Jla?nmaniia  mceftia  mundi,  and  saw  worlds  in  the  making, 
and  the  torrent  of  atoms,  knew  no  delusion.  Life  and 
death  appeared  in  no  fantastic  guise  to  this  great  iconoclast 
of  superstition,  this  harrower  of  hell.  Reason  itself  inspired 
the  poem,  thus  justly  appraised  by  the  exquisite  and  worth- 
less Ovid : 

"Carmina  sublimis  tunc  sunt  peritura  Lucreti, 
Exitio  terras  cum  dabit  una  dies." 


64  POST    LIMINIUM 


THE  FOOLS  OF  SHAKSPERE 

[From  Nodes  Shaksferianae,  edited  (for  the  Winchester  College 
Shakspere  Society)  by  the  Rev.  Charles  Halford  Hawkins, 
M.A.,  President.     Winchester  and  London,  1887.] 

The  fools,  by  profession,  of  Shakspere's  making  are 
something  less  than  ten  in  number.  Something  less,  inas- 
much as  amongst  the  fools  proper  and  unashamed  are  not 
included  such  hybrid  natures  as  Jacques  and  Malvolio. 
Two  alone  of  them  have  certain  names  :  Touchstone  and 
Costard;  their  fellows  passed  into  immortality  nameless. 
In  trying  to  give  form  and  aspect  to  the  feeling  of  them, 
"  hard,  hard,  hard  it  is  only  not  to  tumble,  so  fantastical " 
are  they  and  elusive.  About  them  clings  and  rings  an  air 
charged  with  laughter  breaking  at  the  close,  and  radiant 
with  glowing  affection.  In  their  quick  interchange  and 
whimsical  play  of  phantasy  with  fact,  souls  heavy  with  the 
burden  of  tragic  fates  can  find  a  wisdom  hidden  from  the 
martyrs  of  sin  and  sorrow,  unknown,  from  its  worthy 
worldliness,  to  Othello  and  to  Lear.  Trouble  and  weariness 
and  sour  sorrow,  from  the  girding  lips  of  these  fools,  receive 
a  light  that  transfigures  with  shafts  of  mockery  and  homely 
comparison.  It  is  with  us  and  them,  as  though  the  wise  of 
the  world,  masters  of  lore  and  experience,  stood  by  the 
world's  ways  casting  their  hoarded  wisdom  into  the  air  and 
upon  the  wayfarers  in  peals  of  laughter  and  with  gentle 
malice :  an  exaltation  of  the  cap  and  bells,  in  a  world  where 
motley's  not  the  only  wear,  but  has  disguises. 

In  this  quaint  fellowship  of  fools,  five  are  noteworthier 
than  the  rest.  Headed  by  the  dearest  of  them,  "  the  sweet 
and  bitter  fool "  of  Lear,  they  troop  past  in  the  Masque  of 
Merriment  to  the  jangling  of  sweet  bells  :  Touchstone  from 
the  Forest  of  Arden,  •'/<-.'  ho7iffon  Touchstone  et  la  naive 
Audrey"  laughs  Gautier;  Costard,  from  the  faery  or  elf- 
land  of  Navarre;   he  of  the  Countess  of  Rousillon,  "no 


THE    FOOLS   OF   SHAKSPERE  65 

great  Nebuchadnezzar,"  indeed,  but  "  a  shrewd  knave  and 
an  unhappy  " ;  and,  to  close  the  procession  of  Folly  with 
Holiness,  Sir  Topas,  demurely  reading  Rabelais,  from  the 
land  of  Illyria.  "  Infinite  riches  in  a  little  room  "  are  here ; 
a  medley  of  virtues  and  peccadilloes,  malice  and  devoted- 
ness^  jocund  jesting  and  pitifulness.  There  lurks  in  this 
company  of  kindly  cynics  and  flouting  clowns  no  fool  of  the 
vulgar  sort,  no  hireling  whose  humour  rings  false  or  vile ; 
none  such  as  vexed  the  austere,  pure  soul  of  Dante  at 
Verona,  where — 

"  There  was  a  jester,  a  foul  lout 
Whom  the  Court  loved  for  graceless  arts  ; 
Sworn  scholiast  of  the  bestial  parts 
Of  speech  ;  a  ribald  mouth  to  shout 
In  Folly's  horny  tympanum 
Such  things  as  make  the  wise  man  dumb. 
Much  loved,  him  Dante  loathed." 

The  friendly  fools  of  Shakspere's  making  were  sworn  to 
the  service  of  gentle  ladies  and  courteous  lords  and  an  out- 
cast king  :  love,  in  their  folly,  prevails  over  the  defilements 
that  clog  the  overblown  spirit  of  Rabelais,  and  bring  dis- 
sonance into  delightsomeness. 

Lear's  fool  alone  suffers  himself  to  be  drawn  at  length. 
His  brethren,  for  all  their  grace  or  interest,  are  too  slight  for 
more  than  the  merest  sketching  in  outline.  The  prominence 
given  to  "  the  sweet  and  bitter  fool "  is  his  clear  due  as  an 
actor  in  the  most  dreadful  and  holy  drama  of  the  world :  a 
tragedy  where  the  highest,  wildest,  and  lowest  passions  of 
heavenly  and  earthly  and  hellish  spirits  are  created  in 
substance  of  flesh  and  blood,  making  the  "  act  and  agony 
of  tears  "  to  be  felt  in  soul  and  senses. 

Before  the  Fool's  coming  into  view  and  audience,  an 
affection  of  goodwill  welcomes  him  :  Lear,  self-discrowned, 
but  dishonoured  past  possible  conception  by  unnatural 
fallings  away  from  filial  love  and  duty,  calls,  in  the  growing 
whirlwind  of  righteous   wrath,  for  the   Fool,  and   thrice : 

F 


66  POST   LIMINIUM 

"Where's  my  fool?  I  have  not  seen  him  this  two  days." 
He  is  answered  by  a  knight  of  his  grudged  troop  (not,  in 
all  likelihood,  a  keen  noter  of  cause  and  effect  in  shifting 
humours,  but  here,  for  once,  infallible)  :  "  Since  my  young 
lady's  going  away  into  France,  sir,  the  Fool  hath  much  pined 
away."  This  matter-of-fact  mode  of  speech,  in  its  directness 
and  simplicity,  establishes  the  unseen  Fool  in  all  hearts ; 
not  least  in  the  hungering  and  angered  heart  of  Lear, 
"No  more  of  that;  I  have  noted  it  well."  The  broken 
king  has  brooded  and  lingered  over  the  miseries  of  his 
love,  which  are  the  resolves  of  his  pride.  Cordelia  is  gone. 
But  her  father,  strong  in  each  warring  passion,  has  noted 
well  the  ever-recurring  changes  of  her  absence  :  the  Fool's 
sorrow  at  the  loss  of  Lear's  outcast  daughter  has  bound  the 
two  mourners  in  the  bond  of  a  shared  desolation. 

Through  the  earlier  scenes,  embittering  preludes  to  the 
full  storm  of  passions,  the  Fool  is  constant  with  his  biting 
sallies,  strengthening,  for  all  he  be  but  a  fool  in  his  folly, 
the  soul  of  a  ruined  father  and  despitefully  entreated  king. 
Each  riddle  upon  riddle,  each  fable  upon  fable,  cleaves  to 
the  heart  of  the  matter ;  and^theihomely  grotesques  of  phrase, 
possible  to  an  "all-licensed  fool,"  are  so  many  efforts  to 
bear  up  the  shaken  self-trust  of  his  lord  and  friend.  Well 
writes  Coleridge  that  Shakspere  "  brings  him  into  living 
connection  with  the  pathos  of  the  play."  And  Lear,  with 
an  impressiveness  that  is  heart-breaking,  responds  to  the 
humours  of  folly  in  pity's  guise.  His  "  My  pretty  knave  ! 
how  dost  thou  ?  "  "  Why,  my  boy  ?  "  "  No,  lad,  teach  me," 
— these  gentle  and  simple  words,  caught  up  amid  the  terrors 
of  a  speech  that  does  well  to  be  angry,  are  strangely  moving. 
Staunch  Kent  and  devilish  Goneril  agree  to  discern  a  some- 
thing not  altogether  the  spirit  of  jesting  in  this  jester : 
"  This  is  not  altogether  fool,  my  lord,"  and  "  You,  sir,  more 
knave  than  fool,  after  your  master."  And  with  a  sublime 
foolishness,  which  is  indeed  something  more  than  witless 
folly,  he  goes  with  the  appeal :  "  Nuncle  Lear,  Nuncle  Lear, 


THE    FOOLS   OF   SHAKSPERE  67 

tarry  and  take  the  Fool  with  thee  !"  Soon  the  first  flash  is 
struck  out  of  the  darkness  before  the  midnight  of  horror. 
Regan  rejects  him  ;  Goneril  has  rejected  him ;  Lear,  in  the 
outburst  opening  with  the  words  "  Oh  !  reason  not  the 
need,"  closes  the  holy  denunciation  with  words  more 
dreadful  than  all  else  :  "0  Fool,  I  shall  go  mad  ! "  He 
turns  to  the  merry  fellow  of  his  constant  companionship, 
the  man  of  shrewd  wit  and  pleasantries,  the  jolly  fool ;  and 
to  him  Lear  confesses  that  he  must  presently  become  one 
of  the  foolish :  not  as  a  fond  and  faithful  fool,  but,  by  the 
agonising  compulsion  ofdistraught  nature,  thrust  with  blinded 
soul  to  the  outer  darkness  :  "  O  Fool,  I  shall  go  mad ! " 

Hard  upon  the  pathos  of  this  conscious  cry  comes  that 
revelation  of  awe  in  the  highest,  no  more  even  by  Lamb  to 
be  extolled  than  by  Salvini  to  be  enacted,  when  Shakspere, 
in  the  great  words  of  Hugo,  '■^ prend  la  demence,  qu'il  par- 
tagc  en  trois,  et  il  met  eti  presence  trois  fous^  le  bo7iffo7t  du 
del,  fou  par  metier  ;  Edgar  de  Glocester,  fou  par  prudence ; 
le  roi,  fo2i  par  miserer  Misery,  incarnate  in  the  father 
spurned,  the  king  set  at  naught,  baring  his  heart  to  the 
night  and  "  winter  winds,  not  so  unkind  as  man's  ingrati- 
tude/' and  waited  upon  by  Folly,  "who  labours  to  outjest 
his  heart-struck  injuries."  If  it  savour  not  of  presumption, 
one  would  say  that  in  these  supreme  places  Shakspere  has 
reached  a  higher  iambic  music  wherewith  to  clothe  a  higher 
imagination  than  elsewhere  at  all  in  his  work.  To  this 
effect  writes  Hugo  in  the  historic  preface  to  his  Cromwell : 
"  Parfois  petit  le  grotesque,  sans  discordance,  comme  dafis  la 
scene  du  roi  Lear  et  de  son  Fou,  meter  sa  voix  criarde  aux 
plus  stiblimes,  azix  plus  lugubres,  aux  plus  reveuses  7}msiques 
de  tamer  And  side  by  side  with  such  deep  wonders  there 
is  room  for  such  splendour  of  piteousness  as  this  : — 

"  Lear.  My  wits  begun  to  turn. 

Come  on,  my  boy  :  how  dost,  my  boy  ?  art  cold  ? 
I  am  cold  myself.     Where  is  the  straw,  my  fellow  ? 
The  art  of  our  necessities  is  strange. 


68  POST    LIMINIUM 

That  can  make  vile  things  precious.     Come,  your  hovel  ! 
Poor  fool  and  knave,  I  have  one  part  in  my  heart 
That's  sorry  yet  for  thee. 

Fool.  He  that  has  and  a  little  tiny  wit, —  [singing. 
With  hey,  ho,  the  wind  and  the  rain  ! — 
Must  make  content  with  his  fortunes  fit ; 
For  the  rain  it  raineth  every  day. 
Lear,  True,  my  boy.     Come,  bring  us  to  this  hovel." 

The  pity  and  passion  of  this  are  soon  over  for  the  "fou 
par  metier"  Perhaps  there  have  not  been  spoken  words 
more  touching  at  leaving  life  than  the  Fool's :  "  I'll  go  to 
bed  at  noon."  Those  among  the  critics  are  assuredly  in 
the  right  who  take  them  thus,  as  gentle  folly's  ending  before 
the  time.  For  Lear's  cry  of  anguish  :  "  And  my  poor  fool 
is  hanged ! "  must  be  a  cry  over  Cordelia,  for  all  the  reasons 
of  beauty  and  circumstance  and  simplicity.  The  Fool 
already  is  dead,  his  nature  strained  to  death,  heart-broken. 
And  the  highest  comment  has  been  made  upon  the  Fool 
when  Lear  calls  upon  his  daughter,  lost  and  found  and  lost, 
by  that  gentle  name,  and  makes  her  '■'■folle  par  grace  de 
del"  fool  by  sweet  nature  and  frailness  and  world's  usage. 

Thus  much,  but  not  to  disproportion,  for  the  "  sweet 
and  bitter  fool"  whom  the  Fates  made  acquainted  with 
tragedy.  Nearest  to  him,  yet  at  a  distance,  is  Touchstone, 
shrewdly  laughing  down  the  forest,  fierce-haunted,  yet 
pastoral,  of  Arden  :  that  Arden  of  Warwickshire,  lions 
notwithstanding,  which  had  William  of  Wykeham  once  to 
Warden.  He,  too,  follows  into  exile;  and  this  is  the 
engaging  manner  of  his  outset : — 

' '  Rosalind.  What  if  we  assayed  to  steal 

The  clownish  Fool  out  of  your  father's  court  ? 
Would  he  not  be  a  comfort  to  our  travel  ? 

Celia.  He'll  go  along  o'er  the  wild  world  with  me. 
Leave  me  alone  to  woo  him." 

But,  further^  for  a  contrast  with  that  bitter  exile  : 

"  Now  go  we  in  content, 
To  liberty,  and  not  to  banishment." 


THE   FOOLS    OF   SHAKSPERE  69 

Touchstone  is  the  spirit  of  laughter  at  crosses,  where 
sulkiness  is  the  common  display :  a  man  who  jests  with 
Fortune  in  her  humours,  with  dry  jollity.  Far  from  being 
a  Mark  Tapley,  that  odd  creation  of  the  Ben  Jonson  of 
novelists,  he  would  succumb  to  the  passions  of  Lear ;  but 
his  is  the  lighter  task  to  beguile  a  weary  way  and  a 
venturesome  romance,  and  not  to  assuage  heart-wounds 
with  quips  and  cranks.  Something  of  the  soul  of  Heine, 
coarsened  and  dulled  and  embruted  to  fit  the  mould  of  a 
"  roguish  clown,"  is  in  Touchstone.  His  grotesques  con- 
cluding a  flight  of  fancy,  his  merry  irreverences,  and  his 
fantastic  trick  of  cross-allusion  and  application,  bring  to 
mind  the  yet  incommunicable  tears  and  laughter  of  the 
dear  poet.  Touchstone's  transforming  view  of  things, 
which  is  his  wit,  his  alternating  epigram  and  sententious- 
ness,  make  him  a  rare  feast  for  the  dainty  and  matured 
melancholy  of  Jacques,  the  embittered  and  humane  cynic, 
the  jester's  well-bred  counterpart.  The  contrast  of  these 
two  (one  of  the  uncounted  contrasts  of  temperament  and 
circumstance,  in  which  Shakspere  luxuriates),  gives  occa- 
sion to  an  anatomy  of  melancholy  in  all  its  phases,  most 
wonderful  under  the  greenwood  tree.  The  meeting  of 
moralist  and  merryman  is  conceived  in  well-meaning 
malice;  the  wealth  of  Shakspere's  humanity,  observant 
and  piercing,  has  spent  itself  upon  this  enchanting  chance, 
which  makes  of  the  merriment  moralising,  of  the  moralising 
merriment.  To  the  cynic,  whose  cynicism  is  one  half  a 
conscious  predisposition  towards  epigram  and  things  sar- 
donic, the  discovery  of  a  fool  i'  the  forest,  a  fool  by  pro- 
fession, is  matter  for  richest  paradox.  From  the  vantage 
of  the  jester's  license,  Jacques  would  with  biting  words 
regenerate  "  the  infected  world "  :  Stylites  a-snarl.  So 
wildly  can  the  bourgeois  Touchstone  work  upon  the  forest 
philosopher.  In  and  out  among  the  scenes  of  the  wood- 
land, Jacques  steals  with  complacent  chuckling  over  the 
humours  of  the  little  world.     He  will  go  so  far  as  Master 


70  POST   LIMINIUM 

AVhat  ye  call't,  as  give  away  a  wife  to  his  treasured  motley 
fool,  for  is  not  Touchstone  a  right  good  materialist  in 
marriage  ethics,  and  a  casuist  of  the  best,  when  Corin  the 
shepherd  or  forester  William  be  the  disputant  ?  "  Good  my 
lord,  like  this  fellow,"  is  Jacques'  formula  of  introduction  to 
the  Duke  for  Touchstone.  To  this  connoisseur  in  human 
kind,  motley  is  a  rare  specimen,  "  very  swift  and  senten- 
tious," and  gifted  with  many  a  "  dulcet  disease  "  of  folly  in- 
valuable to  the  student  of  humours.  He  has  knowledge  of 
the  Seven  Paths  of  Quarrel,  and  in  his  brain 

"  strange  places  crammed 
With  observation,  the  which  he  vents 
In  mangled  form." 

In  Jacques'  phrase,  be  valediction  to  "  this  motley-minded 
gentleman  "  and  faithful  fool.  "  Is  not  this  a  rare  fellow, 
my  lord?  he's  as  good  as  anything,  and  yet  a  fool." 

Shakspere's  distinction  between  fool  and  clown  becomes 
clear  when  Costard  follows  Touchstone.  His  adjective  is 
rather  "blunt"  than  "gentle."  The  clown  is  the  rural 
humourist,  rough  and  ready,  honest  and  perverse.  He 
has  none  of  that  sweet  unreasonableness  which  makes  the 
jester :  he  is  a  logical  fallacy  incarnate.  In  Navarre,  that  in- 
imitable land  of  braggarts,  pedants,  peasant  wenches,  courtly 
ladies,  rustic  dignitaries,  and  princely  lovers, — a  medley 
of  men  and  women,  one  and  all  a  little  mad,  Shak- 
spere's young  genius  wantons  and  runs  riot  in  rhyme.  The 
artless  play  is  one  laugh,  broader  or  more  delicate,  as  it 
marks  the  mind  of  fair  lady  or  rude  clown.  Costard,  with 
his  frankness  and  naivetd,  his  audacity  and  lightness,  has 
charms  peculiarly  his  own.  Set  off  against  his  mother-wit 
are  Dull  and  Holofernes  :  Dr.  Goldsmitli  and  Dr.  Johnson, 
as  graceless  Grub  Street  once  called  them,  no  unfamiliar 
faces  yet;  and  the  chivalrous  hidalgo,  roistering  Don 
Adriano  de  Armado,  Don  Quixote  degenerate  in  the  third 
degree.  Moth,  "  sweet  ounce  of  man's  flesh,  incony  Jew  ! " 
promises  to  grow  to  the  spiritual  stature   of  Touchstone, 


THE   FOOLS   OF    SHAKSPERE  7 1 

being  already  "  a  most  acute  juvenal."  Slight  and  occa- 
sional as  these  characters  may  seem,  it  is  yet  in  these  that 
Shakspere  displays  the  discrimination  of  knowledge  which 
makes  his  work,  in  the  high  phrase  of  Keats,  a  thing  real : 
"  such  as  existences  of  sun,  moon,  and  stars,  and  passages  of 
Shakspere  ! "  Gradations  of  humour,  distinctions  of  folly, 
shades  of  oddity,  are  with  him  separate  and  real.  He 
knows  the  village  wag  from  the  village  natural ;  Hofnarr 
and  valet,  bumpkin  and  wit,  live  each  after  his  kind.  And 
this  play  of  Lov^s  Laboicr's  Lost  has  this  amongst  its  charms, 
that  it  shows  so  clearly  at  the  outset  the  young  power 
of  the  dramatist  to  realise  life  in  the  right  way  :  "  image 
the  parts,  then  execute  the  whole." 

The  fool  whose  wit  in  AWs  Well  that  Ends  Well  flouts 
and  contrasts  with  the  braggadocio  of  Parolles,  though 
hardly  so  omnipresent  as  others  of  his  tribe,  contrives  to 
suggest  a  definite  personality.  "  Shrewd  and  unhappy  "  is 
a  shrewd  and  happy  summing-up  of  his  characteristics 
quaint  and  pregnant.  He  is  the  indulged,  it  would  seem 
the  matured,  servant-friend,  whose  tongue  may  wag  and 
freely  trip  in  his  lady's  chamber  with  never  a  scolding. 
But  his  jests  at  life  constitute  him  in  his  place  a  low-born 
Jacques.  His  railleries  serve  to  amuse  the  fading  wits  of 
his  mistress,  the  old  Countess ;  she  plays  with  his  fancies 
and  daUies  with  his  impudence.  A  pleasant  picture  they 
make  together :  the  wizened  clown,  his  features  puckered 
to  a  sour  jest,  and  the  stately  dame,  shaking  her  sides  like 
Mrs.  Quickly  at  the  constant  whimsicalities  of  her  dead 
husband's  favourite  : 

"  I  play  the  noble  housewife  with  the  time, 
To  entertain  't  so  merrily  with  a  fool." 

Enter  Feste,  the  jester  of  Illyria,  so  named  of  tradition. 
With  him  Malvolio,  whose  ill-advised  motley  is  not  the 
right  wear ;  that  is  only  yellow  stockings  cross-gartered.  In 
this  "strange  pair  of  beasts"  yet  another  artful  contrast  is 


PJ2  POST    LIMINIUM 

intended.  The  pragmatic  "  fool  of  quality"  or,  at  least,  of 
ofifice,  divides  with  his  spiritual  comforter.  Sir  Topas,  the 
diverse  laurels  of  folly.  This  jester  is  the  purest  and  most 
perfect  household  fool,  though  his  jangling  is  less  tempered 
by  an  attention  to  the  fortunes  of  his  masters  than  is  the 
merriment  of  many  amongst  his  brethren.  In  him  the 
careful  artist  is  clearly  seen.  Rabelais  is  his  text-book 
of  fools'  lore,  and  the  maxims  of  Quinapalus  his  credo. 
Jacques'  characterisation,  "  motley-minded,"  is  to  him 
"misprision  in  the  highest  degree."  For  '' cucullus  nofi 
facit  monachum  :  that's  as  much  as  to  say^,  I  wear  not 
motley  in  my  brain."  To  the  delectation  of  Sir  Andrew 
Aguecheek  ("  many  do  call  him  fool "),  he  will  study  to 
tell  "of  Pigrogromitus  and  of  the  Vapians  passing  the 
equinoctial  of  Quenbus,"  most  gracious  fooling !  and  in 
his  mouth  Shakspere  puts  some  of  his  most  musical  songs, 
for  the  clown  "  takes  pleasure  in  singing."  Art  for  art  is 
his  chosen  precept ;  he  tends  and  cultivates  his  follies.  Of 
sages,  Pythagoras  is  his  elect,  and  the  foes  who  set  him 
down  an  ass  he  prefers  to  the  friends  who  make  of  him  an 
ass  with  praise ;  for  he  would  fain  profit  by  self-knowledge. 
In  the  art,  further,  of  persuading  others  into  double-dealing 
he  excels.  The  hearty  flavour  of  fun  pervades  his  nature, 
impudent,  fearless,  and  quick.  In  him  are  well  shown  the 
relations  of  wise  men  and  the  declared  fools  ;  by  abandon- 
ing the  conventions  of  thought,  which  do  duty  for  original 
wisdom,  he  returns  to  his  mother  -  wit,  and  thrives 
thereon. 

Meagre  as  is  this  adumbration  of  Shakspere's  lively 
fools,  it  still  may  serve  to  bind  in  one  cluster  a  rare  society. 
Rare,  for  many  reasons  :  of  which  the  palmary  may  be  the 
perfect  peculiarity  and  distinction  which  mark  the  society 
of  Shaksperian  fools.  The  conception  of  singular  persons 
whose  singularity  is  at  once  their  brand  and  privilege,  is  uni- 
versal. Mexican  Montezuma  and  Macedonian  Philip  had 
each  his  fool :   if  Veronian  ladies  plumed  themselves  on 


THE    FOOLS   OF    SHAKSPERE  73 

monstrous  dwarfs,  ladies  of  Queen  Anne  revelled  in  black- 
amoor pages  no  less.  It  would  seem  to  be  inbred  in  men 
that  they  should  delight  to  witness  something  removed 
from  the  common  level  of  mankind ;  that  an  occasional 
glimpse  into  the  quainter  ways  and  freaks  of  nature  should 
excite  their  curious  interest,  of  which  interest  the  form 
and  fashion  must  vary  between  higher  and  lower  impulses, 
between  the  impulse  of  human  sympathy  and  the  impulse 
of  human  curiosity.  The  history  of  fools  at  large  shows 
the  latter  and  lesser  in  the  ascendant.  As  to  a  collector 
a  smudge,  a  blot,  a  disfigurement  invests  some  cherished 
Rembrandt  etching  with  a  greater  value  than  a  rectified 
after-copy  can  possess,  in  this  way  the  sane,  safe  souls  of  the 
majority  take  pleasure  in  witnessing  eccentric  humours  or 
misshapen  bodies.  The  brilliant  gibe  or  biting  sally, 
issuing  from  the  lips  of  wry-faced  folly,  achieves  an 
electrical  success.  Grave  companies  and  corporations  have 
indulged  the  laughing  taste  :  the  Catholic  Church  had  her 
parodist  boy-bishop,  Winchester  her  junior's  terminal 
license  to  abuse  his  prefect,  Oxford  her  racy  silvern 
Latinist,  the  Terrcz  Filius.  Fantasticality  is  the  first,  un- 
couthness  the  second  requisite ;  but  everywhere  and  when 
the  desire  has  been  to  rouse  and  titillate  workaday  souls 
with  a  taste  of  Yorick's  quality. 

And  most  useful  is  the  study  of  fools  well  taken  in  hand, 
for  "  in  this  world  there  are  more  fools  than  men."  And 
George  Meredith,  our  wisest,  is  at  one  with  Heine  in  these 
words  :  "  Our  sympathies,  one  may  fancy,  will  be  broader, 
our  critical  acumen  shrewder,  if  we  accept  the  thing 
'  fantastical '  as  a  part  of  us  and  worthy  of  study."  The 
murmured  comments  of  the  imperial  crowd  in  Fausf 
express  the  same  burden  : — 

•*  Zwei  Schelme  sind's,  verstehn  sich  schon  ; 
Varr  und  Phantast,  so  nah  dem  Thron  ; 
Ein  mattgesungen,  alt  Gedlcht, 
Der  Thor  blast  ein,  der  Weise  spricht.", 


74  POST    LIMINIUM 

The  fool  being  thus  established  on  the  basis  of  mediocre 
minds  demanding  him,  his  handling  by  Shakspere  should 
be  of  singular  merit,  as  is  the  case  indeed.  That  his  fool- 
creatures  are  alive  and  capable,  has  been  seen  by  the 
sketching  of  them ;  it  remains  to  make  clear  their  distinc- 
tion from  the  fools  of  others. 

The  tradition  of  the  Elizabethan  stage  preserved,  some- 
thing as  the  Italian  stage  preserves  Pulcinello  from  times 
anterior  to  Rome,  the  figure  of  demon  or  devil  from  the 
old  moralities.  As  Vice,  or  Beelzebub,  or  Apollyon,  the 
buffoon  ranted  and  roared  to  the  accompaniment  of 
broadest  farce.  The  spirit  of  spectacular  enjoyment  that 
in  the  Middle  Ages  broke  loose  in  the  Feast  of  Fools  and 
the  Feast  of  the  Ass,  found  its  formal  channel  in  the 
miracle  plays  and  the  moralities.  In  these  the  high 
dogmas  and  histories  of  the  Faith  were  travestied,  now  by 
burlesque,  now  by  would-be  solemn  performance.  Their  in- 
terest, for  our  purpose,  is  centred  in  the  comedian  professed. 
A  strange  confirmation  of  the  satyr  side  of  human  nature  is 
given  by  the  fact  that  in  the  Power  of  Evil,  obscene, 
riotous,  grotesque,  honest  English  men  and  women  found 
their  yearly  source  and  well-spring  of  laughter.  Not  that 
deliberate  evil  lent  a  horror  to  noble  revolt,  nor  that 
pruriency  was  an  element  of  pleasure ;  but,  whilst  neither 
Milton  nor  Petronius  would  have  sympathised,  there 
remains  a  convulsed  idea  of  moral  obliteration  in  natures 
thus  revelling  in  scenes  from  the  Walpurgisnacht.  In  the 
extreme  only  is  this  true;  but  tendencies  are  only  in 
extremes  to  be  estimated. 

Having,  then,  this  comic  power  ready  to  hand,  the 
Elizabethan  dramatist  cast  about  him  for  its  application  to 
life.  The  stage  was  no  longer  a  scene  for  allegory ;  the 
fresh  breath  of  the  time  cleared  off  the  mists  and  veils  ot 
"  economic  representations,"  and  left  it  free  for  the  acting 
of  men  and  women's  lives,  crossing  and  entangling,  strug- 
gling and  working  out  some  end.     In  comedy  and  tragedy 


THE   FOOLS   OF   SHAKSPERE  7  5 

alike,  vraisemblance  was  the  ideal.  From  the  Power  of 
Evil,  coarse  and  rude,  sprang  the  fool.  The  application 
of  that  earlier  form  to  the  facts  of  life  resulted  in  the 
finding  of  nature's  cracked  workmanship  in  man :  un- 
accountable, malign,  tender,  or  side-splitting.  The  fool 
came  to  light  once  more.  In  his  admirable  study  of  the 
fools  and  clowns  of  Shakspere,  Mr.  Douce  has  hardly 
insisted  upon  the  peculiar  turn  so  given  to  their  character. 
He  treats  the  fool  too  much  as  a  stage  puppet,  and  without 
regard  for  his  conception  in  the  poet's  brain. 

If  we  look  at  fools  contemporary  or  subsequent, 
their  point  of  difference  from  Shakspere's  fools  will  prove 
to  be  their  lesser  degree  of  substance.  They  are  either 
funny  fellows  of  the  stage  or  distorted  natures  ;  Shakspere's 
are  men  of  passions,  humours  and  feelings  like  to,  whilst 
different  from,  those  of  other  men.  Touchstone  and  Feste 
cannot  be  considered  lightly,  or  labelled,  each  with  his 
humour,  as  for  Ben  Jonson's  cabinet.  It  is  characteristic 
of  M.  Taine  that  he  writes  about  Shakspere's  fools : 
^^  L' imagination  machinale  fait  Ics  personndges  betes  de 
Shakspere."  If  so  direct  a  negative  may  be  affirmed  with- 
out provincialism,  one  would  deny  the  dictum  wholly. 
There  is  nothing  mechanical  in  the  ways  of  Shakspere's 
work. 

It  must  be  enough  to  refer  merely  to  the  work  of  others 
in  the  same  line ;  a  little  care  soon  brings  to  light  the  main 
dissemblances.  In  Greene's  Honourable  History  of  Friar 
Bacon  and  Friar  Bungay  (1594),  take  Ralph  Simnel,  Prince 
Edward's  fool,  and  Miles,  Bacon's  poor  scholar-servant ; 
in  Marlowe's  Tragical  History  of  Doctor  Faustus  (1588?), 
take  Ralph,  Robin,  and  the  clown;  in  Marston's  The 
Malcontent  (1604),  take  Passarello,  the  "old  choleric 
Marshal's "  fool :  and  from  Ben  Jonson  take  any  of  his 
innumerable  wags  and  jesters ;  and  from  Kyd  or  Tourneur 
extract  what  element  of  folly  may  lurk  in  their  shadows ; 
and  the  difference  is  apparent  at  once.    These  lesser  fools 


76  POST   LIMINIUM 

and  humorists  are  a  "  criticism  of  life,"  but  they  live  apart, 
in  a  region  of  roistering  merriment  and  prescribed  clown- 
ishness.  The  beauty  of  Sterne  and  of  Heine,  unsearchable 
and  suddenly  startling,  meets  us  in  the  human  learning  of 
Shakspere,  who  knew  the  world  bettter  than  any  man,  not 
being  its  designer,  has  known  it.  And  with  the  worthy  suc- 
cessors of  Shakspere  the  knowledge  indeed  remains,  but 
bitterness  of  some  sort  has  infested  it.  Davie  Gellatley,  in 
the  first-born  book  of  the  great  Shakesperian,  Scott ;  Cino 
Galli,  in  the  first-born  of  Mr.  Swinburne ;  Triboulet,  in  the 
dreadful  work  of  Hugo,  Le  Roi  s'affiuse ;  Dagonet,  in  Lord 
Tennyson's  Idylls ;  Archie,  in  Shelley's  strong  fragment  of 
King  Charles;  the  Fool  in  Michael  Field's  Elizabethan 
tragedy  out  of  due  time,  Loyalty  or  Love? — how  melan- 
choly, how  piteous  are  all  these  !  A  change  has  passed 
over  the  pleasures  and  instructive  joys  of  England,  which 
gives  to  wit  the  dirge  instead  of  the  ditty.  In  that  singular 
and  unapprehended  book,  Dago7iet  the  Jester,  the  change 
is  told  in  strong,  strange  Enghsh  :  how  "  the  sap  of  the 
merry  greenwood  and  the  life-stream  of  England's  wanton 
revelry "  froze  and  died  with  the  death  of  Dagonet,  an 
imagined  last  lingering  jester  of  the  ancient  kind  : — 

*'  No  !  those  days  are  gone  away, 
And  their  hours  are  old  and  gray, 
And  their  minutes  buried  all 
Under  the  down-trodden  pall 
Of  the  leaves  of  many  years." 

Hear  a  jester's  pourtrayal  of  jesters  : — 

"  Orage  !  etre  bouffon  !  Orage  !  etre  difibrme  ! 
Toujours,  cette  pensee  !  et  qu'on  veille  ou  qu'on  dorme, 
Quand  du  monde  en  revant  vous  avez  fait  le  tour, 
Retomber  sur  ceci :  '  Je  suis  bouffon  de  cour  ! ' 
Ne  vouloir,  ne  pouvoir,  ne  devoir  et  ne  faire 

Que  rire ! 

O  pauvre  fou  de  cour  !  c'est  un  homme  apres  tout ! " 


THE   FOOLS   OF   SHAKSPERE 


77 


Or  hear  Cromwell,  Carlyle's  practical  humorist : — 

"  Qu'il  est  heureux,  ce  fou  !    Jusque  dans  White  Hall, 
II  crea  autour  de  lui  tout  un  monde  ideal  ! 
II  n'a  point  de  sujets,  point  de  trone  ;  il  est  libre, 
II  n'a  pas  dans  le  ccEur  de  doulouceuse  fibre  ! 

qu'il  est  heureux  ! 

Sa  parole  est  du  bruit ;  son  existence  un  reve. 
Et  quand  il  atteindra  la  terme  oil  tout  s'acheve, 
Cette  faux  de  la  mort,  dont  mal  ne  se  defend, 
Ne  sera  qu'un  hochet  pour  ce  viellard  enfant." 

Or  hear  Arthur's  fool  answer  Arthur's  knight,  the  one 
dour,  the  other  forsworn  : — 

"  Swine?     I  have  wallowed,  I  have  washed  ;  the  world 
Is  flesh  and  shadow.     I  have  had  my  day. 
The  dirty  nurse,  Experience,  in  her  kind 
Hath  fouled  me  :  an  I  wallowed,  then  I  washed. 
I  have  had  my  day  and  my  philosophies, 
And  thank  the  Lord  I  am  King  Arthur's  fool." 

But  Launcelot  is  recreant,  and  the  world  bitter,  and — 

"  I  am  thy  fool. 
And  I  shall  never  make  thee  smile  again." 

Reality,  then,  and  humanity  are  the  notes  of  Shakspere's 
fools.  They  live,  and  are  not  outside,  ''  the  kindly  race  of 
men."  A  poet,  than  whom  none  living  is  truer,  seems  to 
put  into  words  their  fashioning  in  the  deep  mind  of 
Shakspere  : 

"  Ramp,  tramp,  stamp,  and  confound 
Fancy  with  fact ; — the  lost  secret  is  found." 

Common  life,  consecrated,  stirs  in  the  world  of  Shakspere, 
and  to  the  fools  it  is  given  to  lay  bare  something  of  the 
springs  of  pity  and  comfort,  something  of  the  secret  of 
laughter  and  cheerfulness.  And  they  do  this,  not  by  rant 
or  vulgarity,  but  by  hearts  prompting  tongues,  in  weal  or 
woe.  They  are  part  of  that  which  Hugo  (despite  Mr. 
Morley's  disgust)  rightly  calls  " /e  sourire  ideal"  the  joy 
of  the  whole  earth. 


78  POST   LIMINIUM 

Triboulet  and  Dagonet  fail  us;  Cromwell  was  wrong; 
only  the  jesters  of  Shakspere  serve  our  more  jaded  and 
dustier  day.  In  their  quaint  voices  pleads  the  voice  of 
that  Merry  England  which  is  more  than  myth.  Not  the 
England  alone  of  morrice-dance  and  maypole,  but  an  England 
where  sincerity  of  manners  and  freshness  of  thought,  amid 
all  the  frolics  as  old  as  the  world,  created  a  belief  in  the 
value  of  simple  life.  Honesty,  courage,  friendliness,  were 
the  old-world  virtues  of  the  inspirers  of  that  generous  age : 
filled  with  the  gravity  befitting  citizens  of  the  world,  some 
men  went  their  ways  like  Plutarch's  men,  but  with  the 
gentler  graces  of  their  faith,  and  higher  reverence.  There 
was  never,  in  truth,  an  age  so  minded  in  its  entirety ;  but 
something  there  has  been  in  the  past,  an  unnamed  influence, 
which  the  present  misses ;  and  were  Sir  Topas  of  Illyria  on 
earth  again,  he  might  be  loth  to  exchange  Pythagoras  and 
his  foolishness  for  the  subtler  wisdom  of  elaborate  despair, 
and  melancholy  born  of  culture. 

For,  were  Sir  Topas  on  earth  again,  these  birthmarks  he 
would  find  upon  his  successors,  plain  to  view  upon  a  whole 
class  of  workers  in  literature  and  philosophers  in  society. 
And  had  he  assumed  or  assimilated  to  himself  the  spirit 
of  his  new  age,  he  might  amuse  his  learned  leisure  by  tracing 
out  the  pedigree  of  modern  melancholy,  from  the  shrewd- 
ness of  Montaigne  and  the  wise  laughter  of  Rabelais  to  the 
tempered  causticity  of  Mr.  Arnold  and  the  chastened 
gravity  of  Mr.  Pater.  He  would  find  the  degeneracy  of  his 
Elizabethan  fellows  trailing  through  the  mysterious  age  of 
the  Stuarts,  as  wit  turned  to  far-fetching  and  humour  to 
conceit,  and  a  habit  of  mind  gained  ground  that  accepted 
these.  Where  once  Ralegh  wrote  the  History  of  the  Worlds 
feeling  power  and  light  for  the  labour,  since  he  had  worn 
his  manhood  upon  the  New  World  seas  and  the  court  of 
Gloriana,  now  Burton  anatomizes  melancholy.  In  his 
imperfect  sight  melancholy  is  a  province  of  human  nature, 
justly  asking  as  careful  a  consideration  as  the  Ecclesiastical 


THE   FOOLS   OF   SHAKSPERE  79 

Polity  itself.  It  is  the  age  of  Hobbes  and  Herbert,  Donne 
and  Crashaw,  Norris,  Ferrar,  and  More  ;  of  men  whose 
names  and  dates  may  fearlessly  be  mingled,  on  the  strength 
of  their  common  bond.  That  bond  is  an  extravagance  of 
mental  habit :  a  wandering,  whether  to  Christian  Talmudism, 
Catholic  Quietism,  Anglican  Platonism,  or  Erastian  expedi- 
ence, outside  and  beyond  the  strict  limits  of  what  is  gener- 
ally wholesome.  An  atmosphere  is  about,  in  which  the 
fool  hides  his  cap  and  bells,  and  lurks  in  the  folds  of  a 
Geneva  gown,  or  lies  ensconced  in  the  lawns  of  Oxford  amid 
doctors  and  mitred  men.  Exclusive  gibing  is  at  an  end, 
for  folk  are  grown  at  once  too  wise  and  too  foolish,  too 
anxious  and  too  trivial,  to  enjoy  one  hearty  intellectual 
laugh  at  the  world.  Even  Izaak  Walton,  peacefully  angling 
among  the  water-meads  of  Itchen,  his  mind  running  on 
Marlowe's  lyric,  and  no  less  on  the  bombast  of  Du  Bartas ; 
full  of  love  for  the  venerable  and  courteous  Provost  of  Eton, 
and  no  less  for  his  "  dear  son  "  and  unworthy  son,  Cotton  \ — 
even  Walton  has  not  escaped  scot-free  from  the  infection  of 
oddity.  Despite  the  charm  and  beauty  abundant,  the  age, 
as  a  whole,  is  warped  from  the  Elizabethan  vigour.  And 
Sir  Topas,  continuing  his  research  into  continuity,  would 
skip  with  a  Benedicite  over  the  strange  years  in  which  the 
strained  brains  of  England  gave  way  to  madness,  and  such 
grim  jesting  sprang  up  as  might  be  amongst  the  warring 
chivalries  of  Loyalist  and  Puritan ;  when  there  sat  at  last 
upon  the  throne,  Dictator  in  all  but  name,  a  "gloomy 
brewer/'  who  played  monkey-tricks  at  Whitehall  banquets, 
and  made  England  honoured  through  Christendom.  Clearly 
the  professional  jester  was  not  wanted.  But  Cromwell  died, 
and  Charles  the  Martyr's  son  came  back  to  live  with  a  will. 
The  oppressions  of  war  and  disorder  vanished  from  the 
surface  of  things,  and  the  grievous  mental  travail  and  labour 
from  their  heart.  All  the  Hudibrastic  tendencies  in  human 
nature  towards  what  is  laughable  and  pleasantly  provoking 
became  delirious,  at  the  reaction  from  earnest  turmoil  and 


8o  POST   LIMINIUM 

real  disturbance  to  a  revel  of  licence  and  indifference.  But 
how  deep  the  difference  between  the  land  of  Illyria  and  the 
land  of  England !  between  a  land  where  Olivias  were 
mistresses,  and  Sir  Toby  and  Sir  Topas  and  Sir  Andrew 
were  roisterers,  and  a  land  where 

— "flared  Charles  Satyr's  saturnalia 
Of  Lely  nymphs,  who  panting  sang  :  '  More  gold  ; 
We  yield  our  beauties  freely  ;  gold,  more  gold  ! '  " 

Not  even  "gentle-hearted"  Lamb's  apology  can  sweeten 
all  the  wit  of  Farquhar  and  Congreve,  Etherege  and 
Rochester,  Dryden  and  Vanbrugh.  It  is  rotten  wit,  with 
nothing  of  Helicon  or  Castaly  in  it,  unredeemed  by  any 
pastoral  savour  of  SiciHan  grossness.  To  this  wit  of  reckless- 
ness succeeds,  as  the  nation  settles  down  to  stable  growth, 
the  sterling  worth  and  wit  of  the  Spectator^  of  the  Citizen 
of  the  World,  of  Tom  Jones  and  Roderick  Random ;  suc- 
ceed, too,  the  bitter  and  bestial  genius  of  Swift,  the  wilful 
and  blinder  humour  of  Sterne.  And  to  these  succeed  in 
due  course  the  best-beloved  Lamb,  and  Scott,  Byron  with 
Don  Juan,  Thackeray  the  historian  of  humourists.  And  to 
these  latter  dead  legion  succeeds,  with  flippant  novels, 
ingenious  essays,  quaint  verse,  and  universal  superiority  of 
manners  ;  and  with  "  beauty  and  anguish  walking  hand-in- 
hand  "  on  every  side  of  literature. 

Only  by  straying  thus  far  from  the  fools  of  Shakspere 
can  their  serene  supremacy  be  established  without  demur. 
The  spirit  that  conceived  them  appears  on  a  higher  ground, 
with  wider  vision,  than  the  spirits  of  after-craftsmen.  If,  as 
Coleridge  and  Schlegel  said,  the  fools  play  the  part  of  a 
Greek  chorus,  they  are  the  chorus  to  every  form  of  tragedy 
and  comedy ;  meeting  life  at  all  turns  with  answers  as  tersely 
convincing  as  the  seiiteniiae  of  Horace  and  Seneca,  and  by 
a  great  deal  wiser.  Their  collective  wisdom  is  not  a  reck- 
less laugh,  nor  a  curious  fancy,  nor  a  plain  man's  mediocre 
jest ;  it  is  deeper  than  Addison,  stronger  than  Goldsmith, 
gentler-mannered  than  Byron,  not  less  spiritual  at  heart, 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  8l 

though  less  in  expression,  than  Thackeray.  They  lack  a 
store  of  "  sonnets  and  subtilties ; "  but  their  remedies 
against  the  evils  of  a  sweet  and  bitter  life  are  to  laugh  with 
love,  to  be  sorrowful  with  smiles,  and  to  seem  ignorant  of 
formal  philosophy  and  the  fashions  of  an  exacting  world. 


WILLIAM   BLAKE 

\The  Academy,  Aug.  26,  1S93.] 
.  .  .  Was  Blake  mad  ?  It  is  a  question  always  with  us. 
Some  say,  *'  Hopelessly  mad  "  ;  others,  "  Not  vulgarly  mad," 
but  mad  in  a  superior  way,  like — well,  like  St.  Paul,  and 
Swedenborg,  and  Behmen,  and  St.  Theresa,  and  Tauler, 
and  perhaps  Coleridge,  and  possibly  Pascal,  and  probably 
Paracelsus.  "  Blasted  with  excess  of  light,"  he  may  be,  and 
too  full  of  "  that  fine  madness,"  common,  as  Plato  knew,  to 
poets :  not  a  man  for  the  strait  waistcoat  and  the  padded 
cell,  but  certainly  touched  somewhere,  liable  to  strange 
delusions,  possessed  or  obsessed  by  wild  fancies  and 
visionary  dreams  :  a  victim  of  his  own  imagination.  If  we 
ask  for  proof,  we  are  told,  first,  his  life  was  most  eccentric ; 
secondly,  his  writings  are  frantic.  So  firmly  is  this  opinion 
held  by  some,  that  an  eminent  physician,  in  all  good  faith, 
once  published  the  astounding  statement  that  Blake 
"  became  actually  insane,  and  remained  in  an  asylum  for 
thirty  years."  Most  devil's  advocates  of  Blake's  insanity 
are  content  with  the  milder  view,  already  indicated.  Now, 
this  much  is  certain :  that  plain,  commonplace,  sober  men, 
well  acquainted  with  Blake  in  ordinary  intercourse,  saw  in 
him  one  of  themselves ;  that  clever,  shrewd,  intelligent  men 
thought  him  odd,  but  quite  rational ;  and  that  men  of  high 
powers  in  art  and  literature,  scholars  and  sages  of  various 
schools,  unanimously  pronounced  him  sane.  The  evidence 
of  his  contemporaries  is  great  in  amount,  and  unvarying  in 
substance.     No  one  knew  Blake,  and  thought  him  mad. 

G 


82  POST   LIMINIUM 

So  far  as  Blake's  life  is  concerned,  the  question  resolves 
itself  into  one  of  facts.  Do  the  known  facts  indicate  that 
Blake  was,  in  FitzGerald's  phrase,  "  quite  mad,  but  of  a 
madness  that  was  really  the  elements  of  great  genius  ill- 
sorted  ;  in  fact,  a  genius  with  a  screw  loose  ? "  Do  facts 
compel  us,  in  Dr.  Malkin's  indignant  phrase,  to  "pursue 
and  scare  a  warm  and  brilliant  imagination,  with  the  hue 
and  cry  of  madness  ?  "  An  honest  study  of  the  facts  must 
lead  to  this  conclusion  :  that  it  would  be  far  easier  to  prove 
the  madness  of  Shelley  or  of  Lamb,  from  the  recorded  facts 
of  their  lives,  than  the  madness  of  Blake.  The  two  or 
three  wild  stories,  of  the  "  Adam  and  Eve  "  sort,  have  been 
universally  discredited :  whilst  the  general  tenour  of  Blake's 
life  is  known  to  have  been  prudent,  laborious,  courteous, 
gentle,  charitable,  sober,  calm.  But  he  used  strange 
language  :  he  talked  of  hired  villains  making  attempts  upon 
his  life,  not  to  say  his  wife,  also.  It  is  precisely  upon  such 
points  that  Mr.  Ellis  and  Mr.  Yeats  *  are  invaluable.  They 
tell  us  what  Blake  habitually  meant  by  such  phrases :  how 
*'  life,"  to  him,  was  freedom  of  the  spirit  in  the  world  of 
eternal  imagination ;  how  any  influence  depressing,  or 
thwarting,  his  artistic  aims  was  a  murderous  influence, 
destroying  the  life  which  he  lived  not  by  bread  alone,  and 
w^hich  consisted  not  in  the  multitude  of  his  possessions. 
They  show  us  that  Blake  used  these  terms  with  precision : 
how  living  Reynolds  and  dead  Rubens  were  to  him 
hirelings  and  villains  alike,  meaning  that  their  sense  of  art 
was  a  blighting  and  wasting  and  deadening  influence. 
Nothing  is  singular  and  isolated  in  Blake  :  a  violent  phrase 
strikes  us,  and  we  find  it  habitually  used  by  him  with  one 
identical  precision  of  meaning  from  first  to  last.  But  the 
very  sign  of  most  madness  is  the  solution  of  all  continuity 
and  consistency  in  thought :  talk  to  a  madman,  one  of  an 

*  The  Works  of  William  Blake,  Poetic,  Symbolic,  and  Critical. 
Edited  with  lithographs,  and  a  Memoir  and  Interpretation  by  E.  J. 
Ellis  and  W.  B.  Yeats.     (London.     Quaritch,  1893.) 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  S^ 

originally  fine  intelligence,  and  you  will  find  him  methodical 
in  his  madness  for  an  hour,  and  then  incoherently  irre- 
sponsible and  flighty.  There  is  none  of  this  in  Blake :  no 
breaking  down  of  the  reason,  no  breaking  out  into  frenzy 
and  incoherence.  But  the  prophetic  books,  say  some  :  that 
mass  of  chaotic,  confounded,  and  confounding  nonsense, 
where  splendid  poetry  alternates  with  unmanageable 
rubbish !  If  that  be  a  true  account  of  them,  Blake  was 
mad ;  but  how  few  readers,  from  Mr.  Swinburne  downwards, 
have  been  at  the  pains  to  master  them  !  Assuredly,  I  had 
not ;  but  I  have  never  presumed  to  call  them  unintelligible, 
because  I  did  not  understand  them,  Mr.  Ellis  and  Mr. 
Yeats  have  been  at  these  pains ;  and,  all  thanks  be  to  them, 
no  one  can  any  longer  so  speak  of  the  prophetic  books. 
For  they  have  studied  them  through  and  through :  they 
have  endured  the  toils  of  analysis,  comparison,  investiga- 
tion ;  and  they  have  made  it  clear,  they  have  made  it 
certain,  that  Blake  had  one  meaning,  one  purpose,  through- 
out. Take  all  the  seemingly  grotesque  nomenclature  of  his 
enormous  myths,  Enitharmon,  Los,  Golgonooza,  Bath, 
Felpham,  Oro,  Canterbury,  Battersea;  see  how  each  name 
is  employed  throughout  the  books ;  compare  its  meaning 
here  with  its  meaning  there ;  examine  the  bearing  of  one 
myth  upon  another,  of  this  narrative  with  that ;  you  will  be 
forced  to  acknowledge  that  these  vast  stories,  vast  powers 
and  personifications,  "  moving  about  in  worlds  not  realised," 
are  thoroughly  consistent  and  harmonious.  You  will  also 
see  that  Blake,  exercising  his  liberty  of  vision,  discerns  his 
actors  in  various  relations  and  positions :  one  power  will 
appear  under  many  aspects :  but  you  will  never  find  him 
inextricably  confusing  his  myths.  I  only  claim  that  a 
careful  study  of  Blake's  text,  and  of  these  commentaries, 
will  show  that  Blake's  prophetic  books,  if  mad,  are 
admirably  methodical  in  their  madness ;  that  he  was  not 
under  the  spell  of  chance  dreams  and  monstrous  imageries, 
turbidly  and  rhapsodically  thrown   together  as  by  some 


84  POST   LIMINIUM 

unbalanced  faculty.  Test  the  books  as  you  would  test  the 
Iliad,  or  Hamlet,  or  Faust.  Some  allowances  you  must 
perforce  make  :  but  the  general  result  will  be  a  conviction 
that  one  great  imaginative  mind,  precise,  determinate, 
consistent,  presided  over  their  construction.  I  do  not 
claim  to  have  mastered  them :  that  demands  some  years  of 
patient  study.  I  do  claim  to  have  applied  to  them  the 
most  prosaic  tests,  and  never  to  have  found  them  wanting. 
Ask  a  novice  in  Platonic  philosophy  to  collate  the  various 
passages  of  Plato,  in  which  the  word  "  idea  "  occurs.  He 
will  say,  with  all  due  diffidence,  that  he  discovers  one 
prominent  usage  and  meaning  of  the  word,  together  with 
certain  passages  in  which  it  appears  to  vary  somewhat,  yet 
not  to  the  overthrow  of  Plato's  general  consistency.  Just 
that  is  my  position  :  no  scholar  in  Blake,  I  have  still  tested 
these  commentaries  by  ordinary  methods,  and  found  that, 
upon  the  whole,  they  disclose  to  me  one  persistent  purpose 
in  Blake's  prophetic  books.  True,  I  cannot  presume  to 
say  in  a  few  words  what  that  is.  Blake  is  not  Plato  or 
Aristotle,  a  man  whose  philosophy  is  a  common  possession 
of  many  ages,  easily  sketched,  because  all  can  fill  up  the 
gaps  and  interspaces.  I  can  but  say  that  Mr.  Ellis  and  Mr. 
Yeats  seem  to  me,  one  out  of  many  readers,  to  have  proved 
their  point,  the  rational  consistency  of  Blake's  conceptions  : 
in  fact,  that  he  had  a  system.  When  I  read  in  the 
Ternsalem,  that  "the  Faeries  lead  the  Moon  along  the 
Valley  of  Cherubim,"  I  am  personally  content,  in  my  sloth, 
to  admire  the  vague  beauty  of  the  picture ;  but  I  know  that 
Faeries,  Moon,  Valley,  Cherubim,  have  definite  meanings, 
above  or  underneath  their  pictorial  charm.  Blake's  life, 
Blake's  writings,  Blake's  art  of  design,  have  incontestably  a 
single,  simple  coherence,  a  perfect  unity :  he  lived,  wrote, 
designed  under  one  inspiration,  obedient  to  one  service  of 
the  imagination,  without  extravagance,  without  absurdity. 

But   why   this    symbolism,   this    apparatus   of    mystical 
mythology?     Why  not  say  what  you  have  to  say  in  plain 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  85 

language  ?  Mill  and  Mr.  Spencer  use  plain  language,  and 
yet  their  conceptions  are  difficult.  What  is  the  profit  of  this 
somewhat  suspect  and  perplexing  phraseology,  this  pseudo- 
systematic  machinery?  Surely,  after  all,  Blake  was  a 
splendid  fanatic,  an  innocent  charlatan,  half  deluding  and 
half  deluded  ?  Why  not  say  Space  and  Time,  if  you  mean 
them,  instead  of  using  crackjaw  names  of  fantastic 
personages?  Mr,  Ellis  and  Mr.  Yeats  contrive  to  use 
fairly  lucid  English  to  explain  it  all :  why  did  not  Blake  in 
the  first  instance  ? 

In  reply,  we  may  refer  to  the  chapter  upon  the  "Necessity 
of  Symbolism,"  perhaps  the  finest  piece  of  writing  in  the 
whole  work.     It  probably  escapes  many  readers  and  critics, 
that  any  wholesale  condemnation  of  Blake  applies  also  to 
the  literatures  and  writers  whom  they  revere.     Most  of  us, 
nominally,  are   some   sort   of  Christians.     What   of  Job, 
Isaiah,   Ezekiel,   the    Song    of   Songs,    the    Apocalypse? 
Waiving  all  vexed  questions  of  inspiration,  it  remains  true 
that  the  Biblical  writers,  Israelite  and  Christian,  did  not 
always  use  plain  language :  they  wrote  visions,  allegories, 
parables.    The  early  Christian  exegesis  was  frankly  mystical. 
Moab  and  Edom  and  Egypt  and  Babylon  did  not  mean 
Moab    and    Edom    and    Egypt    and    Babylon,   but    the 
spiritual  significance  of  those  names,  exemplified  in  history. 
In  the  name  of  honesty,  let  us  make  a  clean  sweep  of  all 
this,  if  at  heart  we  revolt  against  it ;  orthodox,  or  heretic, 
or  neither,  we  need  not  be  superstitious.     Let  us  be  honest 
positivists   or  materialists,   and  reject   all  mystical  fables, 
however  ancient  and  venerable.     After  all,  if  much  of  Blake 
seem  ludicrous,  undignified,  unpoetical,  Blake   does  not 
stand  alone  in  that,  but  he  is  openly  modern,  a  man  of  his 
day,  not  afraid  of  its  terms.    Ancient  mystics  are  saved  by 
their  antiquity.     Sincerely,  if  Gilead  be  admissible,  why  not 
Gloucester  ?    If  Gog  and  Magog,  why  not  Urizen  and  Ore  ? 
Bibliolatry,  and  a  false  reverence  for  antiquity,  have  deadened 
alike  our  spiritual  appreciation  and  our  spiritual  humour. 


86  POST    LIMINIUM 

Ijut  the  whole  question,  ultimately,  is  this  :  are  we  bound 
within  the  hmits,  and  by  the  bonds,  of  the  five  senses  ?  If 
not,  and  metaphysics  for  the  most  part  say  No,  what  is  the 
ruling  principle  ?  Blake,  like  so  many  others,  found  it  in 
imagination,  the  power  of  the  spirit,  soul,  mind,  at  their 
highest.  Like  any  Kantian,  he  drew  distinctions  between 
reason  and  understanding;  like  any  Coleridgian,  between 
fancy  and  imagination ;  and,  like  any  Spinozist,  he  saw  all 
things  snl?  specie aterjiitatis.  The  "thing  in  itself"  haunted 
him  ;  he  refused  phenomenal  facts ;  he  pondered  upon  the 
nature  of  things,  as  Lucretius  calls  the  universe,  and  upon  by- 
gone, though  not  obsolete,  systems.  "  He  loved  St.  Theresa." 
His  students  know  how  much  else  he  loved,  how  wide  and 
deep  was  his  mystical  erudition,  his  "  science  of  being,"  his 
ontology.  He  found  his  end  in  a  reaction  almost 
Manichcean  against  nature,  the  material  world :  against 
nature,  he  set  up  art,  the  power  that  divines  and  sees. 
Like  any  theologian,  he  discerned  a  "  fall  of  man,"  a 
severance  and  division  of  his  powers,  a  perpetual  war :  and, 
in  imagination,  he  saw  that  royal  faculty  which  interprets  to 
fallen  and  distracted  man  the  material  witness  of  his  natural 
senses.  That  is  to  say,  imagination  supplies  to  nature  its 
interpretative  symbols.  And  here  we  join  hands  with  all 
poets.  For,  though  we  should  begin  with  drawing 
elementary  distinctions  between  metaphor  and  simile,  and 
end  by  reading  the  history  of  aesthetics  from  Plato  and 
Aristotle  to  Lessing  and  Hegel,  we  shall  not  comprehend 
the  incomprehensible  mystery  of  poetry.  Why  did  Words- 
worth fall  from  the  highest  altitudes  to  the  deepest  depths, 
utterly  unconscious?  Why  does  the  quest  after  rhyme 
sometimes  lead  to  the  highest  beauty  of  thought,  the 
rhyming  words  mutually  charged  with  spiritual  significance, 
though  the  poet  was  ignorant  of  it  ?  One  may  read  scores 
of  treatises  upon  poetry,  learned,  imaginative,  from  Aristotle 
to  Sidney,  from  Sidney  to  Shelley,  and  remain  wholly 
unenlightened.     Blake  delighted  in  the  doctrine  of  corre- 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  87 

spondences,  foolishly  attributed  to  Swedenborg  as  a  dis- 
covery, but  the  most  ancient  wisdom  of  the  world.     It  may 
flippantly  be   termed   saying   one   thing  when   you   mean 
another ;  more  truly  it  means  seeing  that  one  thing  is  the 
sign  and  symbol  of  another.     Imagination  at  work  among 
the   common   things   of  human   experience,  descries   and 
discovers    their    divine   counterparts :    the   world    is    the 
shadow  of  eternal  truth,  and  imagination  their  go-between. 
Though    in  Blake  this  doctrine  or  theory  took  a  special 
form  and  feature,  systematised  itself  peculiarly,  it  is  the 
property  of  all  imaginative  writers,  each  in    his    degree. 
Thus,    to    take    a    living    author,    the    magnificent    Odes 
and   Essays    of    Mr.    Patmore  are    largely  unintelligible, 
apart    from    the    doctrine    of    symbolic    correspondences 
as  utilised  by  a  Catholic.     Assuredly  here  is  the  essence 
of  poetry :  the  perception  of  spiritual  resemblances.    Blake 
chose  to  take  these  resemblances,  and  to  personify  them, 
and   to   embody   or   envisage  them,  and   to   make   them 
in  his  prophetic  books  as  real  and  live  as  Hector  and 
Helen.    He  saw  significance  in  the  points  of  the  compass ; 
he  found  nothing  common  or  unclean;  he  was  utterly  fearless 
in  applying  his  doctrine  to  visible  and  actual  things.     To  a 
prosaic  man  he  would  talk  of  the  weather  or  the  Ministry, 
with  all  imaginable  courtesy  and  practical  address ;  but  in 
himself,  at  least  with  his  friends,  to  his  wife,  he  talked  of 
the    eternal   world    of    imagination    in    which    he    lived, 
discerning  everywhere  its  types  and  images  in  this.     Now 
and  again,  he  burst  out  telling  of  that  world  before  company 
unfit;  and  strange  stories  went  about  how  Mr.  Blake  said 
the  sun  was  the  Greek  Apollo  and  the  Devil,  but  the  real 
sun  cried  "  Holy,  holy,  holy  !  "     Most  of  us  are  content  to 
find  adumbrations  of  eternal  truth  and  absolute  being  in 
material  things.     Blake,  greatly  daring,  dared  to  proclaim 
that  not  the  material  image,  but  the  eternal  thing  signified, 
was   the   reality.      Many   men   think   that  Voltaire's   and 
Johnson's    jesting   refutations   of   Berkeley   are  not   only 


88  POST   LIMINIUM 

amusing,  but  adequate :  such  men  will  see  nothing  in  Blake. 
A  most  imperfect  poet,  best  remembered  by  the  praises  of 
Browning  and  Rossetti,  has  these  lines  : 

"  The  essence  of  mind's  being  is  the  stream  of  thought  ; 
Difference  of  mind's  being  is  difference  of  the  stream  ; 
Within  this  single  difference  may  be  brought 
All  countless  differences  that  are  or  seem. 

"Now  thoughts  associate  in  the  common  mind 
By  outside  semblance,  or  from  general  wont ; 
But  in  the  mind  of  genius,  swift  as  wind 
All  similarly  influencing  thoughts  confront. 

"  Though  the  things  thought,  in  time  and  space,  may  lie 
Wider  than  India  from  the  Arctic  zone  ; 
If  they  impress  one  feeling,  swift  they  fly, 
And  in  the  mind  of  genius  take  one  throne." 

Garth  Wilkinson,  in  the  epilogue  to  those  strange 
poems,  Improvisations  of  the  Spirit^  writes  :  "  Writing  from 
an  influx  which  is  really  out  of  yourself,  or  so  far  within 
yourself  as  to  amount  to  the  same  thing,  is  either  a  mad- 
ness or  a  religion.  I  know  of  no  third  possibility."  Here 
is  a  man,  drunk  with  mysticism,  though  no  mean  master 
in  science,  confessing  the  two  alternatives ;  it  is  impossible 
to  study  Blake,  without  seeing  that  his  inspiration  was 
religious,  spiritual,  not  fanatical  and  insane.  Further,  this 
perception  of  spiritual  correspondences  and  analogies  has 
often  led  to  the  wildest  moral  licence.  Blake,  understood 
literatim  et  verbatim,  is  unconventional  enough,  but  never 
irresponsibly,  enthusiastically  so.  As  Mr.  Dowden  puts  it : 
"  An  antinomian  tendency  is  a  characteristic  common  to 
many  mystics :  it  is  rarely  that  the  antinomianism  is  so 
pure  and  childlike,  yet  so  impassioned,  as  it  was  in  the 
case  of  Blake."  Behmen  is  poetical  enough,  but  exceed- 
ingly vague ;  Swedenborg  is  lucid  enough,  but  exceedingly 
prosaic ;  Blake  is  both  poetical  and — laboriously  studied, — 
lucid.    Take  away  his  nomenclature,  his  mythical  imagery, 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  8g 

and  substitute  its  actual  meaning,  and  he  reads  like  The 
Dark  Night  of  the  Sotil,  by  St.  John  of  the  Cross,  and 
many  another  masterpiece  of  Christian  mysticism.  We 
are  always  hearing  that  the  epic  is  out  of  date  and  im- 
possible. Blake  wrote  epics,  an  epic  including  epics,  upon 
very  high  matters  ;  and  he  has  paid  the  penalty.  Had  he 
cast  his  work  into  another  form,  into  his  excellent  and 
vigorous  prose,  he  would  have  won  applause ;  as  it  is,  he 
recorded  the  truth,  as  his  literary  imagination  gave  it  to 
him,  and  the  world,  the  little  English  world  that  knows  of 
him,  stands  aghast.  Yet  Blake  is  far  more  intelligible  than 
Emerson,  because  far  more  precise.  Precision,  said 
Palmer,  was  his  word.  As  Arnold  maintained  against 
Carlyle,  speaking  of  the  Second  Part  of  Faust,  a  fitful, 
vague  adumbration  of  many  things  is  detestable.  Blake 
knew  that  "  grandeur  of  ideas  is  founded  upon  precision 
of  ideas,"  and  was  definite  to  the  verge  of  absurdity.  .  ,  . 

A  strong  and  fine  character :  a  man,  from  first  to  last, 
breasting  and  facing  all  adversity,  contumely,  and  oppo- 
sition ;  a  man  living  the  life  of  a  sage,  and  dying  the 
death  of  a  saint.  Thoroughly  to  master  his  works  you 
must  learn  a  partially  new  language,  and  a  wholly  new 
mythology.  Say,  if  you  will,  "  Life  is  not  long  enough," 
and  say  no  more ;  do  not,  without  knowledge,  ridicule  or 
attack  a  great  and  generous  Englishman.  Palmer  wrote 
to  Mrs.  Gilchrist  in  connection  with  her  husband's  Life  of 
Blake  : 

"  No  bright  thoughts  have  come  to  me  since  my  boy  left  us,  but 
animated  by  reading  the  MS.  something  did  strike  me,  which  may  be 
worthy  of  consideration — a  preface  (however  short)  by  Mr.  Carlyle. 
I  never  saw  a  perfect  embodiment  of  Mr.  Carlyle's  ideal  of  a  man  in 
earnest  but  in  the  person  of  Blake.  And  if  he  were  to  write  only 
thus  much,  '  This  was  a  good  man  and  true,'  thousands  would  be 
talking  of  Blake,  who  otherwise  would  not  care  twopence  for  fifty 
Blakes  put  together." 

And  Smetham,  no  prejudiced  devotee  of  Blake,  declared  : 
"  If  a  man  can  see  and  feel  that  which  makes  Blake  what 


90  POST    LIMINIUM 

he  is,  he  can  see  and  feel  anything."  But  to  write  of 
Blake  is  as  if  one  had  to  write  of  Wordsworth  for  the  first 
time :  what  theories  of  poetry,  what  imaginative  ideas, 
would  one  have  to  discuss  !  That  battle  is  long  over  and 
done  :  and  Blake  is  a  far  inferior  subject.  Great  poet, 
artist,  mystic,  he  was  none  of  these  perfectly,  none  of 
these  quite  originally.  It  is  important  that  his  place 
should  be  established,  but  his  place  is  not  with  the 
supreme.  Coleridge  said  of  the  mystics  that  they  "kept 
alive  the  heart  within  the  head,"  that  they  were  to  him  "  a 
pillar  of  fire  throughout  the  night,  during  my  wanderings 
through  the  wilderness  of  death."  Blake  is  among  the 
greatest  of  the  mystics ;  but  the  greatest  mystics  have  not 
been  amongst  the  greatest  writers.  They  are  a  class  apart, 
select,  elect,  precious,  but  not  perfect  artists,  and  too  often 
either  the  idols  or  the  playthings  of  fools.  The  greatest 
writers  are  mystical,  not  mystics.  Pure  mysticism,  though 
skilled  interpreters,  as  Mr.  Ellis  and  Mr.  Yeats,  may  make 
it  plain  to  us,  is  still  too  far  away  to  be  the  staple  and 
substance  of  common  literature. 


SAINT  FRANCIS 

YT/ie  Academy,  Feb.  25,  1899;  The  Daily  Chronicle,  Jan.  2,  1901.] 
The  Blessed  Brother  Pacifico  was  praying  before  a  crucifix  : 
"  and  when  he  began  to  pray,  he  was  lifted  up  and 
snatched  away  into  Heaven,  whether  in  the  body  or  out  of 
the  body  God  only  knoweth,  and  saw  in  Heaven  many 
seats,  whereof  he  saw  one  higher  than  the  rest,  and 
glorious  beyond  them  all,  shining  and  made  fair  with  every 
precious  stone.  And  marvelling  at  the  beauty  thereof,  he 
began  to  think  within  himself  whose  seat  it  should  be. 
And  straightway  he  heard  a  voice  saying  unto  him  :  '  This 
seat  was  the  seat  of  Lucifer,  and  in  his  stead  shall  the 
humble  Francis  sit  therein.'."  .  .  .  Deposuit potentes  de  sede :  ef 


SAINT    FRANCIS  9I 

exaltavit  humiles.  "  I  saw  Lucifer,  like  lightning,  fall  from 
Heaven,"  says  one  ;  and  in  fulness  of  lime  another  saw  the 
seat,  the  throne  of  the  ruined  archangel,  the  vacant  sphere 
and  palace  of  his  glory,  filled  by  the  "  poorling  "  husband 
of  poverty.  There  is  more  in  this  than  in  Hamlet's  con- 
jectures concerning  imperial  Caesar's  clay  and  its  eventual 
uses.  This  is  a  legend  of  that  faith  against  which,  in  its 
beginnings,  a  deputation  of  respectable  persons  lodged 
with  the  authorities  the  true  complaint,  that  it  was  "  turn- 
ing the  world  upside  down  "  :  turning  it,  in  truth,  from  Hell 
to  Heaven.  And  the  humble  Francis  replaces  the  fallen 
angel,  that  lamentable  and  calamitous  Great  One :  that 
Prince  of  Darkness  who  (let  correspondents  of  a  certain 
journal  stomach  it  as  they  may)  "is  a  gentleman";  of 
transcendent  ability  and  literally  splendid  origin.  Here  is 
celestial  allopathy:  no  case  of  similia  similibus.  Francis 
had  not  even  the  pride  of  glorying  in  his  insignificance, 
his  despicability,  his  humility  :  he  loved  to  show  himself, 
not  as  the  ostentatious  and  unmistakable  ascetic,  but  as  a 
very  natural  Christian  man. 

Dickens,  that  highly  popular  but  undervalued  writer, 
wrote  a  sketch  called  "  Tom  Tiddler's  Ground."  It  deals 
with  a  '*  gentleman  of  property "  and  intelligence,  who 
assumes  the  part  of  f misanthropic  hermit,  foul  and  con- 
ceited, delighting  in  his  wide  local  fame  in  that  comfortless 
and  idealist  capacity  :  it  riddles  him,  it  exposes  him  almost 
naked  but  for  the  encrusting  dirt,  more  insanely  proud 
than  any  clean  potentate  receiving  public  plaudits  in 
gorgeous  raiment.  Such  a  figure  is  frequent  in  all  religions  : 
the  man  whose  rags,  when  seen  by  others,  become  to  him 
as  cloth  of  gold,  and  his  unsavouriness  as  a  sweet  incense. 
Francis  was  natural ;  no  signs  of  disease  upon  him ;  a 
humorist,  good  fellow,  shrewd  man  of  affairs;  kindly, 
courteous,  "  clubbable  " ;  and  a  saint  so  divinely  human 
that  he  might  have  been  "  the  Beloved  Disciple."  His 
beautiful  simplicity  is  what  strikes  and  stirs  the  modern 


92  POST   LIMINIUM 

mind ;  not,  as  with  our  forefathers,  his  extravagance. 
Early  in  the  century,  one  Eustace,  a  Roman  Catholic  priest 
of  the  old-fashioned  English  type,  wrote  a  Classical  Tour 
in  Italy^  which  Dickens  has  ridiculed,  and  which  was  a 
favourite  with  Mr.  Pater,  from  whose  own  copy  we  quote. 
Upon  reaching  "  Assisium,"  as  the  classical  gentleman  calls 
it,  he  dwells  upon  the  "  founder  of  an  Order  more  extra- 
ordinary perhaps  and  more  numerous,  though  less  useful 
and  less  respectable,  than  that  of  the  Benedictines."  Then 
follow  extravagant  references  to  Lycurgus  and  Cicero, 
puzzled  and  deprecatory  praises,  and  the  sober  conclusion 
that,  "without  being  his  disciples,  we  may  very  safely 
consider  him  as  a  great  and  wonderful  personage." 
Excellent  and  cautious  Mr.  Eustace  !  The  present  genera- 
tion may  not  be  more  inclined  to  walk  in  Franciscan  foot- 
steps, but  assuredly  it  feels  less  perplexity  of  admiration, 
less  hesitation  of  sympathy  :  the  age  of  Thoreau  and  Walt 
Whitman  and  Count  Tolstoi  can  hail  in  Francis  a  reformer 
of  life,  free  from  folly  and  from  failure.  He  has  for  ever 
shown  the  possibilities  of  spiritual  wealth  in  poverty,  of 
spiritual  comfort  in  suffering,  of  spiritual  greatness  in 
obscurity,  of  spiritual  glory  in  humility.  The  genius  of 
Mr.  Shorthouse  once  created  a  Duke  who  said  :  "  My  son 
is  a  far  greater  noble  than  I  could  ever  be  ;  his  mother  was 
one  of  Nature's  peeresses."  If  this  sort  of  metaphor  is 
to  be  allowed,  we  know  not  what  dignity,  by  right  divine 
of  nature,  did  not  belong  to  Francis  :  the  coarse-clad,  bare- 
foot, half-starved  poverello  was  "  one  of  Nature's  "  Popes 
and  Emperors,  an  hierarch  and  monarch  among  men ; 
worthy  to  be,  in  the  supernatural  order,  the  counterpoise 
and  contrast  to  the  fallen  Son  of  the  Morning. 

Readers  of  Mr.  Barrie's  touching  tales  of  lowly  Scottish 
life  must  often  be  disturbed,  distressed,  by  a  kind  of 
innocent  snobbishness  apparent  in  natures  of  an  exquisite 
beauty  and  fine  feeling  :  that  reluctance  to  let  your  neigh- 
bour know  the  truth  about  your  condition  and  circumstance, 


SAINT    FRANCIS  93 

though  there  be  no  shame  nor  discredit  in  them,  which  is 
a  passion  even  in  the  sweet-souled  Jess.  One  wonders 
what  Francis  would  have  thought  of  Thrums :  of  Jess  and 
Leeby  "  preparing  to  receive  company,"  and  acting  several 
lies  so  as  to  seem  more  socially  considerable  and  genteel 
than  they  are,  or  have  any  need  to  be.  It  is  venial,  but 
ugly,  this  shame  when  there  is  no  cause  for  shame.  The 
spirit  of  Francis  ipours  ridicule  upon  those  dingy  sides  of 
life,  and  not  alone  in  Thrums,  but  in  all  the  bustling 
Babylons  of  the  world.  Thanks  to  "  our  Lady  Poverty," 
Francis  was  never  worried ;  he  was  often  anguished,  but  of 
worry,  word  and  thing,  he  did  not  know  the  meaning. 
His  self-reproach,  his  solicitude  for  others,  his  hungerings 
of  soul,  his  burden  of  desire,  are  visible  and  vocal  in 
Brother  Leo's  plain  Legetid ;  but  the  world  never  troubled 
him.  He  sang  his  way  through  it  with  an  urgent  gaiety 
and  blitheness,  loving  it,  but  caring  not  a  jot  for  its 
standards  of  opinion  ;  he  "  kept  sadness  to  himself  and 
God  only,"  showing  to  the  world  a  decent  joyousness,  an 
unclouded  countenance,  a  serene  carriage,  a  princely  ease 
and  graciousness  of  mien.  So  he  had  none  but  noble 
cares  :  most  of  our  cares  are  ignoble.  He  did  what  Tur- 
genev's  young  Russian  idealists  long  to  do,  what  Brook 
Farmers  and  the  like  in  America  have  tried  to  do :  he 
"  simplified  "  himself.  But  it  was  thanks  to  no  theory ;  he 
did  not  artificially  cast  off  artificiality.  Accepting,  without 
questionings,  the  second  nature  of  Christian  grace,  he 
became  not  less,  nor  more,  than  man,  but  natural  man  with  a 
divine  difference.  The," seraphic  saint,"  to  put  it  boldly 
and  frankly,  is  just  one  of  ourselves  without  our  selfishness, 
our  insane  and  vexing  absorption  in  ourselves. 

"  This  is  the  happy  warrior  :  this  is  he 

Whom  every  man-at-arms  would  wish  to  be." 

The  author  of  Stephen  Remarx  has  written  of 

Francis  from  the  High  Church  Anglican  point  of  view,  and  in 
particular  as  one  profoundly  interested  in  ideals  of  communal 


94  POST   LIMINIUM 

life  in  the  Church  of  England.  How  shall  the  spirit  of  Assisi 
be  brought  to  bear  upon  Whitechapel  or  upon  our  stagnant 
village  life  ?  How  shall  a  staid  and  decorous  Estabhshed 
Church  "recapture  that  first  fine  careless  rapture,"  that 
"  lyric  love  "  of  Francis  and  his  carolling  brethren,  God's 
merry  men  ?  How,  avoiding  a  forced,  unnatural  mediaevalism, 
to  make  the  mediaeval  spirit  a  power  upon  our  modern  day  ? 
It  is  with  a  not  unkindly  smile  that  we  think  of  aproned  and 
gaitered  dignitaries  upon  Church  Congress  platforms  listen- 
ing, with  mild  and  moderate  approbation,  to  the  discussion 
of  such  matters,  "  gas  and  gaiters "  being  most  of  the 
result.  There  are  two  hundred  and  six  entries  in  the 
Library  Catalogue  of  the  British  Museum  under  the  head- 
ing of  "  Francis  (Bemadoni),  of  Assisi,  Saint ; "  but  these  are 
questions  too  hard  for  them  to  answer.  Imagine  a 
committee  sitting  to  ascertain  how  the  "average  sensual 
man  "  may  become  a  poet !  The  Wind  of  the  Spirit,  blow- 
ing where  it  listeth,  made  Francis  saint;  the  Fire  of  the 
Spirit  chose  to  flame  in  his  heart ;  Seraphic  Love  elected  to 
inhabit  there.  "  This  sort  cometh  not "  but  by  the  gift  and 
grace  of  immediate  genius,  incalculating,  simple  and 
intuitive;  it  cannot  come  of  planning,  of  studying  and 
pondering,  of  wishes  father  to  the  thought.  It  is  indisputably 
true  that  the  religious  life,  in  the  technical  ecclesiastical 
sense  of  that  term,  has  scant  attractions  for  Protestant  Eng- 
lishmen; that,  for  example,  the  revival  of  monasticism  has 
been  the  least  successful  feature  of  the  Oxford  Movement. 
An  inevitable  aspect  of  artificiality  marks  the  attempts  at 
such  revival ;  it  seems  hopelessly,  self-consciously  archaic, 
imitative,  unspontaneous.  If  it  pleases  a  man  to  call  his 
establishment  "  Ye  Olde  Bunne  Shoppe,"  he  may ;  but  him- 
self and  his  establishment  still  remain  in  an  age  which  does 
not  spell  in  that  fashion.  Mr.  Adderley  evinces  a  vivid 
consciousness  of  the  futility  of  aping  an  irrecoverable  past : 
cucnllus  nonfacit  monachujri,  and  the  Franciscan  cord  does 
not  make  a  friar.     Vocation  is  a  terribly  real  fact,  and  its 


SAINT    FRANCIS  95 

counterfeit  a  disastrous  possibility.  The  absolute  abnegation 
of  self  admits  no  compromise ;  the  complete  renunciation 
of  self-will  allows  no  reservations  : — 

"  The  holy  Father  once  commanded  a  disobedient  religious  to  be 
stripped  of  his  garments,  placed  in  a  deep  pit,  and  covered  with  earth. 
When  the  brethren  were  fulfilling  this  order,  and  only  the  head  of  the 
offender  remained  uncovered,  the  compassionate  Father  drew  near  and 
said  :  '  Art  thou  dead,  brother  ?  Art  thou  dead  ?  '  The  disobedient 
friar,  now  penitent,  replied  :  *  Yes,  Father,  I  am  now  indeed  dead.' 
'  Rise,  then,'  said  the  saint,  '  if  thou  art  truly  dead,  and  henceforth 
obey  the  command  of  thy  Superior  as  thou  oughtest,  and  show  no 
repugnance  to  anything  he  enjoins,  any  more  than  a  corpse  would  do. 
I  wish  my  followers  to  be  dead,  not  living.' " 

What  Francis  preached  he  practised.  The  "  foolishness 
of  the  saints,"  if  you  will ;  and  yet,  a  Francis  sang  : — 

"  O  Love  !  how  can  I  be 
Afraid  of  foolishness. 
If  through  it  I  possess 
And  am  possessed  by  thee  ?  " 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  to  find  ecstasy  in  suffering, 
happiness  in  poverty,  for  love  of  God  and  of  God's  creatures, 
was  nothing  extraordinary  to  Francis,  but  the  purest  common 
sense;  he  was  no  dark  fanatic.  Excessive  asceticism  he 
held  worse  than  none  at  all.  "  Let  the  brothers,"  he 
commands,  "ever  avoid  appearing  gloomy,  sad,  and 
clouded,  like  the  hypocrites  ;  but  let  them  ever  be  found 
joyous  in  the  Lord,  gay,  amiable,  gracious,  as  is  meet." 
He  who  sang  :  "  Blessed  be  God  for  our  sister,  the  death  of 
the  body,"  enjoyed  life  with  a  passion  unsurpassed.  Never 
has  the  glory  of  the  supernatural  des  cended  upon  a  man 
more  natural. 

Mr.  Stevenson  observes  that  the  dramatist,  ecclesiastic, 
commander  resolves,  when  perplexed,  to  do  what  Shakespeare, 
St.  Paul,  Caesar  would  in  like  case  respectively  have  done, 
the  sole  slight  difficulty  lying  in  the  question.  What  is  that  ? 
And  it  is  anything  but  easy  to  say  what  Francis  would  do 
to-day  were  he  in  our  living  England,  to  win  over  into  the 


96  POST    LIMINIUM 

ranks  of  righteousness  the  hooHgan,  the  sweater,  the 
dipsomaniac,  the  prostitute,  the  careless  rich,  and  the  out- 
cast poor.  One  thing  he  would  assuredly  do  :  he  would 
work  under  authority,  never  dreaming  of  indifference  to 
hierarchical  order  and  dogmatic  faith.  Had  Francis  been 
fated  to  deal  with  such  a  Pontiff  as  Savonarola  was  fated  to 
confront,  it  might  have  broken  even  his  indomitable  and 
joyous  heart;  but  he  would  never  in  binding  matters  have 
rebelled.  The  luxuries  and  laxities  of  the  Roman  court 
under  Leo  X.  would  have  grieved  him  sore,  but  would 
never  have  made  of  him  a  Luther.  Macaulay,  in  the  most 
purple-patched  of  his  essays,  lays  his  finger  upon  the  truth 
when  he  says  that  Rome  has  a  genius  for  controlling  and 
utilising  her  enthusiasts,  and  that  the  Anglican  Establish- 
ment has  not.  As  Private  Mulvaney  puts  it,  Rome  is 
remarkably  "  regimental"  in  her  methods,  and  even  Rome 
knows  well  how  corporate  pride  and  other  causes  can 
imperil,  among  the  religious  orders,  the  virtue  of  obedience 
to  authority.  The  founder  of  the  Salvation  Army,  in  his 
introduction  to  a  delightful  little  work  upon  St.  Francis  by 
!Miss  Eileen  Douglas,  "  staff  captain  "  (published  in  a  series 
bearing  the  uncomfortable  title  of  "  The  Red-Hot  Library  "), 
trusts  that  the  difference  between  the  Salvationist  and  the 
Franciscan  spirit  is  "  very  slight,  although  the  manifestations 
of  it  are  widely  diverse."  In  one  respect  at  least,  insistence 
upon  obedience,  General  Booth  pays  his  tribute  to  the 
genuis  of  ecclesiastical  Rome. 

Ante  obitum  nwrtuus,  post  obitum  vivus^  says  the  epitaph 
of  the  Saint.  His  spirit  lives  wherever  men  and  women 
have  learned  that  perfect  suffering,  for  sake  of  love  human 
and  divine,  is  perfect  joy;  that  renunciation  is  enrichment. 
The  poorling  of  Assisi  therein  made  no  new  discovery ;  but 
genius  went  hand  in  hand  in  him  with  grace  to  make  that 
truth  a  music  never  ceasing,  a  fire  unquenchable.  .  .  . 

His  story  is  one  of  those  elect  works  to  be  read,  as  Thomas 
a  Kempis  has  it,  in  a?ignlo,  to  the  soul's  comfort  and  delight ; 


THE   "  HARDNESS  "    OF   DANTE  97 

it  belongs  to  the  true  faery  or  folk-lore  of  the  saints,  and 
has  an  intense  individual  beauty.  It  takes  us  to  that 
Umbrian  countryside  which  the  footprints  of  Francis  and 
his  brethren  have  left  to  us  for  an  Holy  Land ;  to  the  hills 
and  valleys,  woods  and  streams,  where  the  music  of  our 
saint  is  singing,  and  bird  and  beast  obey  him  lovingly,  and 
the  light  of  our  "  Brother  Sun  "  seems  purer  than  elsewhere. 
It  is  the  land  of  him  who  so  loved  the  loveliness  of  water, 
that  "  whensoever  he  did  wash  his  hands,  he  would  make 
choice  of  such  a  place,  as  that  the  water  which  fell  should 
not  be  trodden  by  his  feet  "  ;  who  paid  loving  reverence  to 
the  trees  and  flowers  ;  whose  heart  went  out  towards  every 
living  thing;  who  felt  earth  and  air,  and  water  and  fire,  to 
be  tremulous  and  overflowing  with  the  beauty  of  their 
witness  to  the  beauty  and  the  love  of  God ;  whose  holy  and 
rejoicing  humility  raised  him  to  the  expectant  seat  of 
Lucifer  in  the  unwintering  and  everlasting  Paradise. 


THE    "HARDNESS"   OF  DANTE 

\The speaker,  Aug.  25,  1894.] 

Lord  Chesterfield,  in  the  middle  year  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  wrote  thus  to  his  son : — "  My  dear  Friend,  You 
have  by  this  time,  I  hope  and  believe,  made  such  a  progress 
in  the  Italian  language,  that  you  can  read  it  with  ease :  I 
mean  the  easy  books  in  it :  and  indeed,  in  that,  as  well  as 
in  every  other  language,  the  easiest  books  are  generally  the 
best;  for  whatever  author  is  obscure  and  difficult  in  his 
own  language,  certainly  does  not  think  clearly.  This  is,  in 
my  opinion,  the  case  of  a  celebrated  Italian  author,  to 
whom  the  Italians,  from  the  admiration  they  have  of  him, 
have  given  the  epithet  of  //  divino :  I  mean  Dante.  Though 
I  formerly  knew  Italian  extremely  well,  I  could  never 
understand  him :  for  which  reason  I  had  done  with  him, 
fully  convinced  that  he  was  not  worth  the  pains  necessary 

H 


gS  POST    LI  MINIUM 

to  understand    him."'      A  beautiful  picture :   Chesterfield 
rebukes  Dante  for  obscure  and  sophisticated  thinking.     A 
few  years  later,  a  young  Cambridge  undergraduate,  in  the 
course  of  a   polite  and    cultured   conversation,   modestly 
struck  in  with  an  illustration  from   Dante.     A  silent  and 
retiring  gentleman  suddenly  turned  to  him  : — "  Right ;  but 
have  you  read  Dante,   sir?"      "I  have  endeavoured    to 
understand  him."     Whereupon  the  two  conversed  together 
for  the  rest  of  that   evening,  and  the   elder   invited   the 
younger  to  his  rooms  in  Pembroke.     They  were  Gray  and 
his  young  disciple  Nicholls.      These   two   little   passages 
throw  light  upon  each  other.     "  Sa  repuMion,"  said  impu- 
dent Voltaire,  "  s^affermira   toiijonrs,  parceqiHon   ne  Ic  lit 
gnere."     On  the  contrary,  Dante's  fame,  since  Gray's  day, 
has  waxed  great  and  greater,  because  his  readers  have  been, 
like  Gray,  not  wholly  unworthy  of  him.     Mazzini,  Lamen- 
nais,  Carlyle,  Mr.  Ruskin,  among  the  prophets;  Shelley, 
Byron,  Hugo,  Tennyson,  the  Brownings,  Rossetti,  Arnold, 
among  the  poets  ;  critics,  from  Landor,  Leigh  Hunt,  Arthur 
Hallam,  to  Church,  Symonds,  Mr.  Pater;  the  most  familiar 
of  American  writers,    Longfellow,    Lowell,    Mr.    Norton ; 
scholars  of  devoted  labour,  Scartazzini  and  Witte ;  theo- 
logians and  politicians,  Catholics  and   red-republicans,  a 
great  crowd  of  worshippers,   have   united   to   serve   him. 
Translations  of  him  are  becoming  annual  products ;  and 
consciences,    whether    Anglican    or    Nonconformist,    are 
eagerly   adapting   the   mighty    Catholic   to   their   spiritual 
wants.      And,  with  all  this  enthusiasm,    Chesterfield   was 
partly  right :  Dante  will  always  be  the  hardest  poet  in  the 
world,  not  excepting  ^schylus,  Pindar,  Lucretius,  Shakes- 
peare, Milton,  Browning.     But  Chesterfield  was  precisely 
wrong  in  his  account  of  Dante's  hardness. 

Some  poets  are  hard  because  they  are  vague ;  some 
because  they  are  impersonal ;  some  for  want  of  an  ade- 
quate vocabulary ;  others  "  have  hardness  thrust  upon 
them  "  from  mere  lapse  of  time.     Dante  is  in  none  of  these 


THE   "  HARDNESS       OF   DANTE  99 

cases.  For  lack  of  local  knowledge,  we  shall  never  be 
quite  able  to  follow  Pindar  throughout  his  work  with  abso- 
lute knowledge ;  and  Shakespeare  will  always  be  to  us 
something  of  a  Hamlet.  But  Dante's  hardness  yields  to 
patient  study  :  like  a  mathematical  demonstration,  he  brings 
us  ifitelligibilia^  if  we  will  bring  sufficient  hitellectus.  Hard  he 
is,  not  obscure,  as  Coleridge  luminously  said  of  Persius. 
Necessary,  for  a  competent  understanding  of  Dante,  are 
these  chief  things :  a  knowledge  of  mediaeval  theology 
and  philosophy ;  of  mediaeval  science,  astronomical,  chrono- 
logical, cosmographical ;  of  mediseval  history  at  large ;  of 
the  Papacy,  the  Empire,  and  Florence  in  particular ;  of  the 
Italian  language  in  general,  and  the  Tuscan  in  especial, 
from  early  times  up  to  the  present;  of  mediaeval  classical 
scholarship;  of  Dante's  mediseval  orig'mes ;  of  his  early 
commentators  and  biographers ;  of  Italian  topography  and 
archaeology ;  of  contemporary  art.  Add  to  this  modest  list 
the  necessity  of  being  somewhat  a  poet  and  in  no  wise  a 
pedant,  and  the  study  of  Dante  will  appear  sufficiently 
formidable.  But  facts  are  facts ;  and  it  is  a  fact  that  by 
far  the  greater  part  of  Dante's  hardness  comes,  not  from 
his  own  want  of  clear  thinking,  but  from  his  reader's 
want  of  clear  knowledge ;  and  also,  that  the  means  of 
acquiring  that  clear  knowledge  are  almost  in  every  case 
plentiful.  To  put  it  very  simply :  if  you  know  the 
^neid  of  Virgil  and  the  Suninia  of  Aquinas,  so  much  the 
better  will  you  know  Dante  :  that  is  obvious.  But  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  till  you  know  these  and  many 
other  things  also,  you  cannot  know  Dante.  No  other  poet 
demands  so  multifarious  a  knowledge  in  his  readers.  If  we 
know  the  Attic  orators,  so  much  the  better,  as  Mr.  Jebb 
tells  us,  shall  we  know  Sophocles ;  but  whilst  the  scholar 
has  a  special  pleasure  in  studying  Sophocles  under  that 
illumination,  he  will  not  urge  its  necessity  for  all.  So,  too, 
is  it  with  Milton,  Spenser,  Goethe  :  scholarship  enriches 
our  joy  in  them,  but  scholarship  is  not  a  sine  qua  non  for 


lOO  POST   LIMINIUM 

their  students.  But  Dante,  the  man  of  thought  and  learning, 
wrote  not  a  word  in  wantonness ;  no  poet  can  be  less  read 
at  random,  opened  anywhere,  lazily  followed.  Milton's  mag- 
nificent names  of  classic  and  romantic  places  please  readers 
who  do  not  know,  or  have  forgotten,  their  associations  : 
his  learned  illusions  can  charm  by  the  splendour  of  the 
mere  phrases.  It  is  a  disreputable  way  of  reading  him, 
but  it  is  possible  :  no  such  thing  is  possible  with  Dante. 
The  tense  phrase,  the  brief  sentence,  the  reticent  restraint 
of  him,  simply  baffle  and  confound  the  ignorant  reader : 
this  scholastic  term,  that  classical  instance,  refuse  to  be 
passed  over,  or  half  appreciated.  And  so,  "  Dante  "  com- 
monly means  a  few  famous  passages — Francesca,  Ugolino, 
Matilda,  Sordello,  and  a  score  of  lovely  descriptive  lines  : 
the  whole  "  great  argument "  is  too  high  for  the  generality 
of  readers.  Too  high,  or  too  deep  :  for,  as  Coleridge  has  it, 
"  Dante  does  not  so  much  elevate  your  thoughts,  as  send 
them  down  deeper."  Like  his  great  lover,  Michael  Angelo, 
he  has  no  prettiness,  no  relaxing  of  his  energy ;  and,  as 
Angelo  is  found  by  some  to  crush,  oppress,  overwhelm  by 
sheer  strength,  rather  than  to  charm,  so  it  is  with  Dante. 
"  Anatomical  exercises,"  say  they  of  Angelo  ;  "  scholastic 
exercises,"  of  Dante.  The  beauty  of  both  is  inseparable 
from  their  thought ;  their  vision  of  the  universe  has  an 
universality.  They  will  not  go  out  of  their  way  to  dally 
with  chance  attractions ;  they  loved  law.  With  no  parade 
of  learning,  and  with  no  condescension  to  ignorance,  Dante 
employed  all  his  powers  upon  his  chosen  work;  and  its 
structural  unity  admitted  no  extravagance  of  ornament. 
For  pure  strength  of  conception  and  steadiness  of  execution, 
it  stands  unexcelled,  perhaps  unequalled.  Other  marvels 
of  the  Middle  Age  were  gradual  growths  of  generations  : 
Aquinas  only,  beside  Dante,  raised  as  perfect  a  work  upon 
as  vast  a  scale,  "  without  superfluousness,  without  defect." 

...  A  wealth  of  matters,  well-nigh  inexhaustible,  Dante's 
work  embraces.      It   is  direction  and   guidance   that  his 


LEONARDO   DA   VINCI  10 1 

inexperienced  followers  need  most :  a  Virgil  to  give,  not 
elaborate  disquisitions,  but  pregnant  suggestions.  A  com- 
plete knowledge  of  all  that  Dante  and  his  scholars  have 
written  would  be  an  encyclopaedic  education,  and  the  daily 
labour  of  a  long  Ufetime ;  but  between  that  and  complete 
ignorance  lies  a  happy  mean.  Modern  aids  in  hand,  the 
reader  may  venture  with  Milton,  ad  ilium  Dantem  libentcr  d 
cupide  conunissatum  ire.  Nowhere  do  the  greatness  of  the 
ancient  world  and  of  the  new  so  harmonise  as  in  him ;  and 
our  age  of  looser  thought  and  feeling  may  find  in  him  a 
wisdom,  none  the  less  profitable  for  being  the  result  of  a 
passionate  spirit  and  a  stern  logic ;  confronting  eternal 
realities  faithfully  and  fearlessly,  through  a  pilgrimage  that 
closed  in  the  Luce  eterna  and  the  Rose  of  Paradise. 


LEONARDO   DA  VINCI 

[T/ie  Academy,  Feb.  4,  1899.] 
Were  atheism  true,  Michael  Angelo  could  not  have  been 
an  artist :  certainly  not  the  artist  whom  generations  have 
called,  and  shall  call,  "  the  divine."  For  il  divino,  more 
truly  than  Spinoza,  was  '^  drunk  with  God."  But  Leonardo 
da  Vinci  is  the  archimage  of  art ;  in  whom  was  incarnate, 
royally  and  greatly,  the  pride  of  the  spirit  of  the  natural 
man,  superbly  lusting  after  knowledge  and  lordship  over 
nature,  hungry  for  famiharity  with  the  secrets  of  her  heart : 
from  his  youth  of  strength  and  beauty  to  his  old  age  of 
majesty  and  awe,  he  led  the  wizard  life  of  a  candidate,  an 
aspirant  to  universal  science.  Upon  the  external  side  of 
facts  he  is  well  described  by  the  now  too  little  studied 
Fuseli : 

"  Such  was  the  dawn  of  modern  art,  when  Leonardo  da  Vinci  broke 
forth  with  a  splendour  which  distanced  former  excellence  :  made  up 
of  all  the  elements  that  constitute  the  essence  of  genius,  favoured  by 


I02  POST   LIMINIUM 

educalion  and  circumstances,  all  eye,  all  ear,  all  grasp ;  painter,  poet, 
sculptor,  anatomist,  architect,  engineer,  chemist,  machinist,  musician, 
man  of  science,  and  sometimes  empiric;  he  laid  hold  of  every  beauty 
in  the  enchanted  circle,  but,  without  exclusive  attachment  to  one,  dis- 
missed in  her  turn  each.  Fitter  to  scatter  hints  than  to  teach  by 
example,  he  wasted  life,  insatiate  in  experiment." 

Or,    as    Vasari   puts    it    by   a   quotation   from  Petrarch, 
Leonardo's  accomplishment  was  "  hindered  by  his  desire  "  : 
the  ever-curious  spirit  loved  more  the  idea  than  the  realisa- 
tion of  it,  the  perfect  theory  than  its  demonstration,  the  con- 
scious possession  of  power  than  its  outward  use.     To  this 
princely  painter  the  dream  of  the  picture,  vivid  and  immortal 
before  the  mind's  eye,  was  dearer  than  the  making  it  visible 
to  the  eyes  of  men ;  to  execute  was  less  noble  than  to  con- 
ceive.    And  all  this,  painfully  frequent  as  the  attitude  of 
incapable  small  men,  was  in  his  instance  the  attitude  of  a 
golden  performer,  an  imperial  executant,  whose  hands  were 
as  masterly  as  his  brain  was  masterful.    Imagine  Coleridge, 
full  of  magic  music  and  vision,  but  able  to  finish  "  Christabel," 
if  he  would,  yet  not  finishing  it ;  imagine  him,  full  of  meta- 
physical and  theological  theories,  but,  while  able  to  cast 
them  into  permanent  and  complete  form,  refraining  from 
the  light  task  ;  imagine  him,  opulent,  at  ease,  caressed  and 
courted,  able  to  do  in  his  own  way  all  that  he  was  able  to 
do  at  all,  yet  almost  disdaining  or  disliking  action.     We 
know  that  this  is  an  imagining,  that  Coleridge  lost  his  power 
of  initiative,  his  self-will :  but  that  imagined  Coleridge  has 
much  in  common  with  the  real  Leonardo  :  Leonardo,  to 
quote  the  old  jest,  had  an  impassioned  interest  in  "  every- 
thing knowable  and  certain  other  things,"  yet  the  tale  of 
his  achievement,  as  tested  or  reckoned  by  great  accom- 
plished work,  is  as  poor  in  quantity  as  it  is  rich,  splendidly 
rich,  in  quality. 

To  a  Baconian  zeal  for  experiment  and  practical  power 
over  nature,  Leonardo  added  a  spirit  of  mystical  phantasy ; 
the  man  of  science  was  also  the  mage,  the  pursuer  of  mysteries, 


LEONARDO   DA   VINCI  IO3 

the  lover  of  Eleusinian  darkness  and  light.  Mr,  Swinburne 
speaks  of  "  that  indefinable  grace  and  grave  mystery  which 
belong  to  his  slightest  and  wildest  work."  An  elusive 
strangeness,  almost  daunting  and  fascinating  together,  is  his 
note :  he  gave  something  of  it  to  his  master  Verrocchio, 
much  of  it  to  his  pupil  Luini ;  he  broods,  he  dreams,  his 
patience  surprises  hidden  things  ;  he  moves  in  "  worlds  not 
realised  "  by  the  common  liver. 

"  Raphael  est  baise  par  la  Grace  a  genoux  ; 
Leonard  la  contemple  at  pensif,  la  devine." 

That  is  Suliy-Prudhomme.     This  is  Baudelaire  : 

"  Leonard  de  Vinci,  miroir  profond  et  sombre, 
Ou  des  anges  charmants,  avec  un  doux  souris 
Tout  charge  de  mystere,  apparaissent  a  I'ombre 
Des  glaciers  et  des  pins,  qui  ferment  leur  pays." 

Gautier,  describing  Baudelaire,  says  that  his  lips  had  the 
'^  sinnosites  ?nobilcs,  voluptticuscs  et  ironiqnes"  of  the  haunt- 
ing faces  that  Leonardo  loved  to  paint,  M.  Huysmans 
speaks  of  "  de  Vinci  dont  les  ironblantes  princesses  passenf 
dans  de  mysterieux  paysages  noirs  et  blens."  Lamb,  the 
enthusiast  for  Hogarth,  was  enamoured  of  Leonardo,  as 
appears  in  his  prose  and  verse.     He  writes  to  Hazlitt : 

"  O  la  !  your  Leonardos  of  Oxford  made  my  mouth  water,  I  was 
hurried  through  the  gallery,  and  they  escaped  me.  What  do  I  say  ? 
I  was  a  Goth  then,  and  I  should  not  have  noticed  them,  I  had  not 
settled  my  notions  of  beauty ;  I  have  now  for  ever  :  the  small  head, 
the  long  eye — that  sort  of  peering  curve — the  wicked  Italian  mischief ; 
the  stick-at-nothing,  Herodias'  daughter  kind  of  grace.  You  under- 
stand me  ?  " 

Assuredly  Hazlitt  understood ;  and  Lamb's  informal,  dash- 
ing phrases  express  a  certain  truth  about  Leonardo  not  less 
truly  than  the  elaborate  locutions  of  Mr.  Pater,  with  whom 
is  the  last  word  of  eesthetic,  as  distinct  from  historical, 
criticism.  A  complexity,  a  secrecy,  invests  this  artist  and 
his  art :  he  is  occult,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  feel  at  home  with 
him,  to  feel  sure  of  his  thoughts  and  tendencies,  to  realise 


I04  POST    LIMINIUM 

the  manner  of  the  man.  We  can  follow,  with  fair  certainty, 
the  external  splendours  of  his  proud  progress  through  a 
long  life  to  his  death  in  the  embrace,  as  some  assert,  of 
King  Francis ;  among  the  pomps  of  the  Sforza  court  at 
Milan,  or  in  the  service  of  Cffisar  Borgia,  or  in  rivalry  with 
Michael  Angelo  at  Florence;  but  the  internal  history  of 
the  man  is  dim  and  veiled.  Even  the  outer  history  has  its 
conjectured  strangenesses :  one  erudite  writer  would  have 
us  believe  that  Leonardo  visited  the  East,  served  the  Soldan, 
and  embraced  the  creed  of  Islam.  We  disbelieve  it ;  but 
how  "clouded  with  a  doubt"  must  be  the  character  of  the 
man  about  whom  it  may  be  plausibly  maintained  !  A 
votarist  of  the  distinguished  and  the  princely  in  life,  a  lover 
of  the  choice  and  rich  and  rare,  a  contemner  of  "  the  crowd 
incapable  of  perfectness,"  an  enthusiast  for  wisdom  and 
understanding,  a  man  of  regal  mind  and  bearing,  he  has, 
despite  of  and  because  of  all  that,  a  very  lonely  look,  as  of 
one  "  voyaging  through  strange  seas  of  Thought,  alone  "  :  a 
man,  as  a  strange  poet  has  said  of  him, 

"  with  eager  eyes,  that  ever  restless  gleamed 
Further  to  find,  yet  ever  further  sought." 

Taking  the  famous  symbolism  of  Goethe,  we  can  say  of 
Leonardo  that  he  sought  die  Mutter,  and  was  haughtily  dis- 
posed toward  the  shallows  of  thought  and  faith.  Paganism 
and  Christianity  were  deeply  mingled  in  the  man  whose 
John  Baptist  points  us  to  the  wilderness  with  the  subtle 
smile  of  Dionysus  alluring  to  the  revel.  He  would  have 
said  with  Augustine:  '''■  Res  ipsa,  quae  mmc  religio  Chris- 
tiana nuncupatiir,  erat  apud  antiquos,  nee  defnii  ab  initio 
generis  huviani."  His  imagined  epitaph  by  Platino  Piatto 
makes  him  say  :  "  Mirator  vetcrum  diseipulusqne  mentor, 
Defiut  tma  mihi  sy7nnietria  priscay  In  a  profounder  sense 
than  the  obvious,  it  is  true  :  he  longed  for  the  symmetria 
prisca  of  the  eternal  design,  for  the  harmony  of  the 
spheres,  for  the  rhythm  to  which,  in  light  and  speed  and 


LEONARDO   DA   VINCI  105 

beauty,  sprang  forth  the  morning  of  the  world ;  symmetria 
trisca  meant  more  to  him  than  to  Mantegna  and  SignorelH. 
There  is  something  in  him  of  Goethe  :  a  Hke  aristocracy  of 
mind  and  person,  a  Hke  miiversahty  of  outlook,  a  like  aloof- 
ness amid  the  mass  of  men,  a  like  insatiable  curiosity,  a 
like  self-centred  passion  for  art  and  science,  a  like  lack  of 
provincial  patriotism,  a  like  longing  for  more  light,  a  like 
absorption  in  things  of  the  intellect.  And  he  has  some- 
thing in  common  with  Blake  :  the  spiritual  pride  of  vision, 
the  flame  of  the  mind,  the  devoted  labour,  the  vastness  of 
speculation,  the  mystic  sense,  the  interior  loneliness.  He 
seems  to  have  had  that  exaltation  of  feeling  which  has  made 
many  a  madman  :  the  feeling  of  identity  with  the  universe, 
yet  of  isolation  from  it,  a  feeling  half  divine  and  half  infernal, 
an  intoxication  and  a  torment.  It  is  hard  to  think  of  Leonardo 
as  a  happy  man  :  a  nympholept  of  knowledge  may  escape 
the  pettier  cares,  but  his  desire  is  illimitable  and  so  un- 
satisfied. 

....  Biographies  set  to  rest  certain  points  of  controversy  ; 
but  to  read  them  with  care  is  not  to  receive  a  new  or  altered 
impression  of  the  magnificent  and  multiform  Leonardo; 
rather  to  deepen  and  confirm  our  traditional  view.  He 
abides  in  his  mysterious  glory,  in  the  rare  royalty  of  his 
searching  spirit  and  triumphant  hand,  the  man  whose  least 
fragment  of  work  is  of  incalculable  suggestiveness  and 
revelation.  "  Some  men,"  says  the  Psalmist,  "  are  so  strong 
that  they  come  to  fourscore  'years  "  :  strong  of  spirit  and 
mind  and  will  and  bodily  presence,  strong  in  splendour  of 
personality,  in  reach  and  aspiration  of  genius,  Leonardo 
well-nigh  fulfilled  that  span  of  life.  If,  at  the  manor  house 
of  Cloux  beside  Amboise,  he  died  indeed  in  the  arms  of 
King  Francis,  there  were  two  kings  in  the  chamber  of 
death,  and  "  Messire  Leonardo  da  Vinci  "  knew  himself  to 
be  the  greater,  by  so  much  as  the  imperishable  exceeds  the 
perishing.  The  thoughts  and  dreams  of  Leonardo  are  in 
eternity. 


T06  POST   LIMINIUM 


R.   L.   STEVENSON 

\Tlie  Academy,  June  3,  1S93.] 
The  wandering  Scot,  patriotic  and  energetic,  pushing  his 
fortunes  at  the  ends  of  the  earth,  canny  and  practical,  yet 
moved  ahvays  by  the  memory  of  his  old  home,  is  a  familiar 
figure  in  the  real  life  of  experience  and  in  the  imaginary 
life  of  literature.     Edward   Irving,  in  a  passage  of  much 
magnificence,  extols  the  Scotch   Church  for  begetting  "  a 
national  character  for  industry  and  enterprise,  for  every 
domestic  and  public  virtue,  which  maketh  her  children  ever 
an  acceptable  people  in  the  four  quarters  of  the  earth." 
This  is  patriotically  strong;  and  Dr.  Johnson,  with  other 
critics  of  his  time,  supply  a  salutary  corrective   of  equal 
strength.     But  two  Scotchmen,  the  immortal  Scott  and  the 
admired  Mr.  Stevenson,  have  done  wondrously  in  endearing 
Scotland  to  us.     Scott  displayed  the  romance  of  the  great 
past,  and  led  us  into  a  splendid  company  of  fighters  and 
saints  and  singers,  nobles  and  beggars  and  burghers,  in  old 
Scotland,  old  England,  and  old  France :  the  tragedy  and 
comedy  of  life  in  its  variety.    Burns  is  for  Scotchmen  :  only 
they  can   really  know  his   power;   others   can   and   must 
admire,  but  without  a  perfect  appreciation.     Scott  belongs 
to  all  the  world  :  romantic  revivals  abroad,  religious  revivals 
at  home,  have  derived  much  of  their  inspiration  from  his 
benignant  and  refreshing  genius.     But  Scott's  travels  were 
mostly  of  the  mind  and  the  imagination;   he  seldom  left 
the  lieather  without  regret.     Mr.  Stevenson  is  a  wandering 
Scot   in   the   literal   sense.      Thinking   of  his   twenty-five 
volumes,  dated  from  all  parts  of  the  earth,  we  cannot  but 
praise  and  thank  the  courageous  spirit  of  a  writer  whose 
wanderings,  so  often  made  in  search  of  health,  have  issued 
in  books  of  a  cheerfulness  and  zest  and  zeal,  so  sane  and 
indomitable  and  strong.     With  infinite  pains  and  a  minute 
delicacy  of  skill,  his  art,  the  consolatory  companion  of  his 


R.  L.  STEVENSON  107 

wanderings,  has  taken  us  on  an  enchanted  journey  from  the 
rivers  and  woods  of  France  to  the  seas  and  islands  of  the 
Pacific.     Addison,  with  unfailing  grace  and  humour,  with 
the  serenest  and  the  surest  power,  has  enshrined  for  us  the 
ways  of  Queen  Anne's  London  :  he  touches  upon  high  life 
and  upon  low,  upon  humours  of  the  court  and  of  the  coffee- 
house, upon  the  critic,  the  politician,  the  gallant,  the  great 
lady,  the  honest  citizen  ; — his  pages  contain  it  all,  he  concen- 
trates in  them  all  that  bygone  London.     Travel,  for  most 
men  of  his  kind  and  taste,  meant  a  decorous  ramble  round 
the  courts  and  great  cities  of  Europe :  a  conscious  pursuit 
of  culture  at  a  stately  pace.     But  now,  all  the  round  world 
is  known ;  we  put  girdles  round  the  earth  in  the  manner 
of  Puck.      Colonial^  imperial^  federal^  are  words  much  in 
the  mouths  of  our  politicians,  and  our  men  of  arts  and 
letters  fly  from  China  to  Peru,  and  all  manner  of  nations 
wrangle  together  over  vast  African  regions  and  islands  of 
the  Southern  Seas.     Well,  our  leisurely  Addison  would  find 
it  a  bustling,  arduous,  complicated   theme  for  art.     How 
shall  he  portray  French  peasants  and  Kanakas,  Californians 
and  Chinese,  San  Francisco  and  Fontainebleau,  Samoa  and 
the  Hebrides,  yet  preserve  his  sureness  of  hand,  his  clearness 
of  sight,  his  grace  and  moderation  and  repose?     A  man 
may  pitch   his   tent    or   sling   his   hammock  wherever  he 
choose  in  the  four  continents,  or  upon  the  great  seas ;  catch 
a  little  local  colour,  pick  up  snatches  of  native  dialect,  learn 
something  of  national  habits  and  racial  ways,  and  produce 
his  probably  unimportant  work  in  its  season.     Now,  as  in 
1830,  to  quote  the  pleasant  malice  of  Merimee,  the  watch- 
word is  ever  ^^ point  de  saluf  sans  la  conlenr  locale."     When 
these  romances  have  some  charm,  it  is  commonly  the  charm 
of  strangeness  and  nothing  more  :  an  excellent  charm  indeed. 
But  that  is  not  enough  to  hold  us  captive;  the  work  has 
neither  "  wit  enough  to  keep  it  sweet,"  nor  "  vitality  enough 
to  preserve  it  from  putrefaction."     Said  Peacock's  Mr.  Gall, 
of  landscape  gardening : 


I08  POST    LIMINIUM 

«'  I  distinguish  the  picturesque  and  the  beautiful,  and  I  add  to  them,  in 
the  laying  out  of  grounds,  a  third  and  distinct  character,  which  I  call 
unexpectedness  "  "Pray,  sir,"  said  Mr,  Milestone,  "by  what  name  do 
you  distinguish  this  character,  when  a  person  walks  around  the  grounds 
for  the  second  time  ?  " 

A  Story  does  not  live  only  because  it  treats  of  Florentines 
or  Red  Indians  or  Russians  or  Arabs.  Art  is,  of  course, 
independent  of  time  and  place :  we  are  equally  at  home 
with  Clytemnestra  and  Uncle  Toby,  Dido  and  Hester 
Prynne ;  we  require,  and  in  them  we  find,  the  "  one  touch 
of  nature,"  the  common  humanity.  But  even  that  is  not 
all;  we  want  to  find  the  artist  displaying  his  human 
sympathies  and  knowledge  and  insight  in  a  special,  proper, 
personal  way  of  his  own.  We  have  heard  so  much  of  late 
about  the  impersonality  of  art !  It  is  very  true ;  but  take 
two  of  the  most  impersonal  artists  in  the  world,  any  great 
pair  of  Flauberts,  and  you  will  find  them  dealing  with  the 
same  things,  the  same  scenes,  characters,  situations,  with 
infinitely  various  results;  the  two  men  are  two^  and  they 
are  men.  Briefly,  any  story  can  please  that  is  written  by  a 
man  about  men  and  women;  that  reveals  a  man,  with  a 
definite  sense  of  things,  an  apprehension  of  his  own,  writing 
about  other  men  of  w^hatever  age  or  race,  so  as  to  make 
men  of  all  ages  and  races  interested  in  them. 

"  I  never  think  of  poor  Leander's  fate. 
And  how  he  swam,  and  how  his  bride  sat  late, 
And  watched  the  dreadful  dawning  of  the  light. 
But  as  I  would  of  two  that  died  last  night. 
So  might  they  now  have  lived,  and  so  have  died  : 
The  story's  heart  to  me  still  beats  against  its  side." 

They  who  fulfil  our  conditions  are  classics.  Of  no  living 
man,  and  of  no  lately  dead  man,  can  we  say  that  he  is 
classic :  simply  because  the  judgment  of  other  ages,  and 
often  of  other  races,  has  not  been  passed  upon  him.  But 
some  living  men  are  probationary  classics,  classics  on 
approval :  such  is  Mr.  Stevenson.     Jn  him  I  find  a  modern 


R.    L.    STEVENSON  I09 

Addison,  with  the  old  graces  and  the  old  humours.  True, 
he  is  definitely  "  romantic  "  :  he  loves  the  stir  of  adventure, 
the  whole  business  of  the  whole  world :  he  is  an  ardent 
enthusiast  for  tasting  many  kinds  of  life.  But  he  has  no 
fierce,  feverish  brilliance  and  rapidity ;  not  like  those  vague 
persons  who  have  been  called  "unattached  Christians," 
he  is  full  of  attachment  to  humanity,  and  is  not  satisfied 
with  making  hasty,  clever,  soulless  sketches  of  mankind. 
Wherever  he  goes,  he  learns  to  know  and  love  the  heart, 
the  soul,  the  true  and  active  nature,  of  the  country  and  the 
country  men.  As  Addison  with  his  London  folk,  so  Mr. 
Stevenson  with  all  the  people  under  heaven  known  to  him  : 
they  can  never  and  nowhere  be  so  strange  to  him,  so 
marvellous  or  so  repulsive,  but  he  will  make  friends  with 
them,  try  to  read  their  hearts,  and  picture  them  as  naturally 
as  the  folk  of  his  own  Lothians.  Addison,  Steele,  Mon- 
taigne, Lamb,  Browne,  each  in  his  way  and  measure,  was 
thus  friendly  with  the  world.  "  I  am  averse,"  said  Browne, 
"  from  nothing  :  my  conscience  would  give  me  the  lye  if  I 
should  say  I  absolutely  detest  or  hate  any  essence  but  the 
Devil ;  or  soe  at  least  absolutely  abhor  anything,  but  that 
we  might  come  to  Composition."  This  temper  is  most 
commonly  shown  by  your  leisurely  essayist,  your  writer  of 
wayward  genial  disquisitions,  your  pleasant  and  generous 
moralist.  Mr.  Stevenson  has  shown  it  in  his  various  essays, 
in  Virginibus  Ptierisqiie,  in  Memories  and  Portraits,  in  Men 
and  Books,  in  Across  the  Plains ;  as  also  in  Trave/s  with  a 
Donkey,  in  An  Inlayid  Voyage,  in  the  Silverado  Squatters, 
records  of  pleasing  experiments  in  residence  and  travel ;  as 
also  in  A  Child's  Garden  of  Verses,  where  the  grown  man  is 
still  a  perfect  child.  This  temper  prompts  and  inspires  him 
to  handle  matters  of  actual  practical  concern,  political, 
social,  religious,  as  when  he  champions  the  memory  of 
Father  Damien,  or  exposes  the  calamitous  misgovernment 
of  Samoa,  or  turns  the  dynamiter  into  effective  ridicule. 
But  in  all  these  examples  of  his  art  Mr.  Stevenson  is  largely 


no  POST   LIMINIUM 

his  own  master,  he  is  to  himself  "  both  law  and  impulse  " ; 
for  all  the  niceties  of  design  and  style  demanded  for  such 
books,  they  leave  their  composer  a  wide  freedom ;  novels, 
romances,  stories  do  not.  In  these  he  must  sternly  sup- 
press and  limit  many  fancies,  desires,  impulses;  there  are 
temptations  to  overcome,  seductions  to  withstand.  In  a 
word,  he  must  reconcile  his  own  personality  with  the  im- 
personality required  by  his  art;  and  who  will  affirm  that 
Mr.  Stevenson  has  not  succeeded  ?  He  has  succeeded  very 
largely  by  style,  by  "  a  fine  sense  of  his  words."  As  Newman 
puts  it : 

"  while  the  many  use  language  as  they  find  it,  the  man  of  genius  uses 
it  indeed,  but  subjects  it  withal  to  his  own  purposes,  and  moulds  it 
according  to  his  own  peculiarities.  .  .  .  We  might  as  well  say  that  one 
man's  shadow  is  another's  as  that  the  style  of  a  really  gifted  mind  can 
belong  to  any  but  himself.  It  follows  him  about  as  a  shadow.  His 
thought  and  feeling  are  personal,  and  so  his  language  is  personal." 

The  style  of  Mr.  Stevenson,  like  all  good  styles,  owes 
much  to  other  good  styles :  he  constantly  reminds  us  of 
Thoreau,  Hazlitt,  Browne.  But  one  of  its  original  and 
pervading  elements  is  an  artftil  mastery  and  adaptation  of 
a  Scotch  habit  of  speech,  his  own  birthright :  a  mingling 
of  its  terms  and  graces  and  humours  with  the  less  homely 
and  statelier  language  of  literary  English.  His  David  Bal- 
four surely  speaks  for  him,  saying  of  the  "vulgar"  English, 
"  Indeed,  I  have  never  grown  used  to  it,  nor  yet  altogether 
with  the  English  grammar,  as  perhaps  a  very  critical  eye 
might  here  and  there  spy  out  even  in  these  memoirs." 
Kidnapped  is  a  Scotch  book  in  the  Lowland  tongue,  the 
speech  of  old  Mackellar;  but  something  indefinably, 
pleasantly  Scotch,  a  somewhat  deliberate  sententiousness 
and  slow  elaboration,  all  very  delightful,  hangs  around  Mr. 
Stevenson's  every  page.  This  is  an  age  of  very  individual 
style :  no  one  could  mistake  a  page  of  Mr.  Meredith,  or  of 
Mr.  Pater,  or  of  Mr.  Hardy ;  and  a  page  of  Mr.  Stevenson 
is  no  less  unmistakable.     Whether  he  describe  a  coil  of 


R.    L.    STEVENSON  HI 

rope,  or  a  bad  conscience,  or  a  sword-thrust,  his  language 
alone  will  make  the  thing  his  own,  apart  from  any  peculiar 
interest  or  insight  in  his  position  towards  it.     And  so,  all 
the  world  over,  the  least  familiar  things  come  home  to  us, 
and  convince  us,  and  charm,  because  told  in  a  language 
that  all  his  readers  have  learned  to  know  and  most  have 
learned  to  love.     And  with  style  the  whole  mind  of  the 
writer  comes  in  power  upon  us ;  all  his  attitudes  and  appre- 
hensions.    Beautiful  as  is  Rosamund  Gray,  it  is  not  Lamb  : 
one  work  of  Mr.  Stevenson  differs  from  another  in  merit, 
but  they  are  all  his.     Burney  asked  Johnson,  whether  he 
did   not   think   Otway  frequently  tender.     "Sir,  he  is  all 
tenderness ! "     So,  of  Mr.  Stevenson  shall  we  say  that  he 
is  all  cordiality,  all  sympathy,  all  comprehension  ?   It  is  hard 
to  find   the  exact  expression  for  that  power  of  reaching 
through  the  externals  to  the  interior  of  things  :  of  discerning 
in  and  by  the  outward  aspects  and  manners  of  men  their 
very  selves  and  natures.     Mr.  Stevenson  so  wins  upon  us 
by  his  minutely  appropriate  style,  that  we  cannot  fail  to  see 
what  he  would  be  at :  what  it  is  in  these  peoples  and  places 
— Scotch  be  they,  or  Samoan,  that  touches  him,  rouses  his 
human  interest  and  concern.    Mentem  mortalia  iangjinf,  and 
not  always  to  tears  alone.     Mr.  Stevenson  is  full  of  the 
movement,  the  animation  of  life.     With  no  forced  phrases, 
no  calculated  recklessness  or  brutality  of  speech,  he  takes 
us,  not  into  the  landscape  and  setting  of  men's  lives,  but 
into  their  secret.     He  writes,  to  outward  view,  with  no  eye 
but  for  his  own  pure  personal  pleasure :  not  with  an  eye  to 
an  astonished  or  shocked  or  captivated  public.    By  touches 
of  that  unique  style,  he  brings  the  ugliest  and  coarsest  things 
into  the  pale  of  beauty,  and  gives  to  all  the  rough  lives  and 
places  of  the  world  the  consecration,  not  of  a  brutal  or  of  a 
silly  sentiment,  but  of  an  honest  and  sincere  humanity. 


112  POST  LIMINIUM 

THE  SOUL  OF  SACRED  POETRY 

[The  Academy,  July  25,   1S96;  Dec.  26,   1S96.     The  Outlook,  July 
9,  1898.] 

The  first  necessity  of  the  "  divine  "  poet  is  that  he  should 
be  able  to  say  Scio  cut  credidi,  and  not  betake  himself  to 
interrogations  of  the  infinite.  Tennyson's  "  In  Memoriam," 
Browning's  "  Christmas  Eve  "  and  *'  Easter  Day,"  are  finely 
speculative,  but  neither  mystical  nor  devotional ;  sacred 
poetry  is  the  child  of  theology,  the  flower  in  art  of  a  creed. 
The  creed  may  be  Catholic  in  Southwell,  Crashaw,  Newman, 
Patmore,  Mr.  de  Vere,  Mr.  Francis  Thompson;  Anglican 
in  Vaughan,  Herbert,  Donne,  Hawker,  Miss  Rossetti ; 
Puritan  in  Milton  and  Marvell :  but  behind,  beneath,  beyond 
the  poetry  must  be  felt  the  definiteness  of  faith  which  is  sure 
of  itself,  and  which  wonders,  indeed,  perhaps  questions,  but 
never  doubts.  A  cosmopolitan  cannot  write  patriotic 
poetry ;  no  more  can  true  sacred  poetry  proceed  from  un- 
certainty about  sacred  things.  Given  God  and  man,  with 
certain  distinct  relations  between  them,  certain  dogmatic 
facts  and  truths,  then  the  poet  can  translate  into  terms  of 
breathing  beauty  his  personal  vision  of  a  universal  reality, 
whether  it  be  with  tears  or  raptures.  He  has  his  ttoD  ctt^  : 
he  is  not  web-spinning  in  the  void.  The  matchless  master 
is  of  course  Dante,  whose  Paradise  is  theology  in  ecstasy 
and  transports;  yet  theology  firm  and  rational : — 

"Luce  intellettual  piena  d'  amoie, 
Amor  di  vero  ben  pien  di  letizia, 
Letizia  che  trascende  ogni  dolzore." 

The  absolute  vision  of  Dante  is  rare ;  rarer  still  his  power 
to  express  it. 

"  Views  of  the  unveiled  heavens  alone  forth  bring 
Prophets  who  cannot  sing  ; 
Praise  that  in  chiming  numbers  will  not  run  : 
At  least,  from  David  unto  Dante,  none, 
And  none  since  him." 


THE  SOUL  OF  SACRED  POETRY  II3 

So  sang  Mr.  Patmore,  himself  disproving  his  assertion : 
yet  it  is  very  largely  true.  For  to  most  devout  singers  their 
faith  seems  a  thing  apart  and  afar  from  their  art :  they  do 
not  realise  its  beauty,  its  appeal  to  the  imagination ;  or,  if 
they  do,  they  shrink  from  utterance.  Yet  such  poets  as 
those  I  have  mentioned  are  not  afraid  to  let  their  imagina- 
tions dwell  upon  the  mysteries  of  faith  :  Trinity,  Incarnation, 
Passion,  Pentecost,  Assumption,  Communion  of  Saints, 
Eucharist, — they  discern  in  these  their  divine  and  human 
beauty,  their  loveliness  as  facts  and  truths,  not  as  abstrac- 
tions vaguely  realised,  or  "  articles  of  belief"  without  warmth 
and  glow.  Mere  "  spirituality "  produces  woeful  verse, 
tedious  pietism ;  a  precise  faith,  ardent  at  the  heart  and 
rich  with  the  blood  of  life,  has  produced  lyrical  glories, 
poetry  of  celestial  passion,  Uranian  chaunting.  The  huge 
collections  of  the  German  hymnologists,  Daniel  and  Mone, 
show  how  mediaeval  sacred  poets  pressed  from  an  exact 
theology  its  essential  sweetness  :  and,  for  a  final  word  upon 
the  matter,  let  me  refer  to  a  letter  by  Mr.  de  Vere,  profound 
and  persuasive,  upon  page  244  of  Sir  Henry  Taylor's 
Correspondence.  It  is  a  poet's  exposition,  to  a  poet,  of 
what  is  possible  in  poetry  to  the  "  Christianised  imagi- 
nation." 

Sacred  poets  must  feel  towards  the  contents  of  their  creed 
as  lovers  towards  the  separate  and  single  beauties  of  their 
mistresses  :  a  personal  devotion  to  each  gracious  detail,  with 
a  comprehension  of  their  place  and  ofifice  in  the  gracious 
whole.  There  must  be  a  reverent  familiarity,  no  less  than 
an  awed  veiling  of  the  eyes.  For  this  poetry  abhors  gene- 
ralities :  it  will  have,  to  use  Coleridge's  word,  "  distinctities/' 
and  not  be  afraid  to  face  the  details  of  divine  history.  Take 
the  Nativity.  Here  is  an  hour-old  baby,  lying,  perhaps 
crying,  upon  stable  litter,  in  a  small  Jewish  village,  at  a 
certain  definite  date :  this  wretched  baby  could  abolish 
time  and  space,  for  it  is  God.  Take  the  Crucifixion.  Here 
is  a  worn-out  man,  dying  upon  a  gibbet,  amid  sneers  and 

I 


114 


POST   LIMINIUM 


jeers,  in  the  company  of  two  common  thieves  :  this  miser- 
able man  could  maJce  the  earth  stand  still,  for  He  is  God. 
Poets  who  believe  these  things,  and  see  them  through  an 
adoring  imagination,  will  shrink  from  no  intimate  expression 
of  intimate  emotion  :  so  poets,  from  the  young  Jesuit  martyr 
Southwell  to  Mr.  Thompson,  have  played  with  a  devout 
audacity  upon  the  theme  of  the  Divine  Infancy,  or  pierced 
in  spirit  to  the  most  secret  agonies  of  the  Divine  Passion. 
Not  shirking  the  truth,  out  of  a  falsely  reverent  reticence, 
they  stir  the  imagination  to  mystical  joumeyings  in  heavenly 
places,  by  their  Franciscan  fearlessness  and  cunning.  .  .  . 
With  Dante's  Croatian  pilgrim  to  the  Veronica  we  are 
wrought  upon  to  cry : 

'*  Signer  mio  Gesu  Cristo,  Iddio  verace. 
Or  fu  si  fatta  la  sembianza  vostra?  " 

Such  poetry,  instinct  with  the  logic  which  invests  the 
highest  works  of  imagination,  is  like  the  Sunwia  of  Aquinas 
with  the  glory  of  art  upon  it ;  there  is  no  pious  prettiness 
or  platitude,  but  the  august  simplicity  of  truth.  And  the 
spirit  of  it  "  bloweth  where  it  listeth."  The  least  "  cultured  " 
of  conventicles,  the  wildest  American  camp-meeting,  has 
heard  strains  of  this  intimate  emotion,  which  have  their 
moments  of  true  mysticism,  rightly  apprehended. 

There  should  be  courtesy,  courtliness,  high  breeding,  in 
our  converse  with  the  King  of  Kings ;  but  anything  is  better 
than  a  pompous  frigidity,  a  conventional  stiffness,  in  presence 
of  the  royal  and  eternal  Love.  Boundless  familiarity  and 
boundless  awe  are  well  compatible  and  congruous  :  they 
augment  each  other.  Towards  Mr.  Spencer's  Unknown  I 
may  feel  awe ;  with  Mr.  Harrison's  Humanity  I  may  feel 
familiar  ;  but  Christianity,  as  a  thing  of  historic  facts  and 
superhuman  dogmas,  affects  me  in  both  ways,  and  I  find 
poetry  in  all  theology,  theology  in  much  poetry,  whilst 
neither  transgresses  upon  its  neighbour's  province.  .  .  . 
Mr.  Wilfrid  Ward  has  told  us  how,  when  his  famous  father 
averred  that  man's  attitude  towards  God  must  necessarily 


THE  SOUL  OF  SACRED  POETRY  II5 

be  one  of  abjection,  a  friend  replied :  "  Not  abject !  Certainly, 
it  should  be  deferential,  but  not  abject."  A  delightful,  a 
characteristic  via  media/  If  any  man  object  to  the  present 
realism  of  the  best  sacred  mystical  poetry,  you  will  find  that, 
really,  he  has  never  realised  his  own  faith ;  if  he  thinks  it 
"  indecent "  to  write  intimately  of  the  Divine  Infancy,  he 
is  one  who,  had  he  been  a  contemporary  of  the  Divine  Infant, 
v/ould  have  shrunk  from  acknowledging  its  divinity.  No 
true  devotional  poet  should  be  shy  of  imitating  Southwell's 

' '  His  chilling  cold  doth  heat  require  : 
Come,  seraphim,  in  lieu  of  fire  ! 
This  little  ark  no  cover  hath  : 
Let  cherubs'  wings  his  body  swathe. 
Come,  Raphael,  this  babe  must  eat : 
Provide  our  little  Toby  meat." 

In  truth,  here  is  the  "  grotesque  realism  "  of  faith  ;  here 
is  no  decorouSj  no  discreet  respectability  of  carriage  towards 
divine  things  :  it  is  the  very  foolishness  and  madness  of 
devotion,  the  mark  of  saints. 

From  a  homesickness  for  Heaven,  which  makes  verse 
quiver  and  thrill,  springs  .  .  .  that  merry  appropriation  of 
the  Holy  Child,  with  all  the  holy  hospitalities  of  Christmas  ; 
that  mediaeval  expression,  in  good  wholesome  ways,  of  the 
full  theological  purport  of  the  Incarnation :  the  true 
Humanity,  the  true  Divinity,  the  two  Natures  in  the  one 
Person.  At  "  the  first  Noel "  claritas  Dei  circumfulsit ;  the 
night  blossomed  into  flame  beneath  the  feet  of  the 
Heavenly  Host :  wherefore  Christendom  has  in  all  times 
and  places  rejoiced  in  a  rich  warmth  of  Christmas  colour, 
in  a  kind  of  sacramental  merriment  in  carols  and  anthems 
like  innocent  drinking-songs,  in  hail-fellowship  with  the 
world.  Has  not  an  old  caroller  of  Kent  dared  to  write 
this  of  Christ  and  His  Mother  ? 

"  He  did  whistle  and  she  did  sing,  she  did  sing,  she  did  sing  ; 
And  all  the  bells  on  earth  did  ring 
A  Christmas  day  in  the  morning  !  " 


Il6  POST    LIMINIUM 

At  no  other  season  does  the  fatal  divorce  between  sacred 
and  secular  seem  so  meaningless ;  at  no  season  were  it 
more  pardonable  to  laugh  in  Church !  In  other  words, 
it  is  the  children's  feast,  and  our  mature  seriousness  blushes 
without  shame  into  a  simple  joy.  Saint  Teresa,  one  Christ- 
mas, bade  a  sister  sing.  The  sister  was  of  opinion  that  to 
contemplate  were  more  seasonable.  She  had  her  desire  : 
she  contemplated  the  walls  of  her  cell,  in  solitude,  for 
many  days  !  The  sacred  singers  must  dare,  with  the  first 
Franciscans,  not  only  to  fall  prostrate  before  their  Lord, 
but  to  be  His  "  merry  men,"  His  carollers  and  gay 
minstrels.  .  .  . 

Profoundly  spiritual,  or  rather  mystical,  as  is  the  art 
of  Dante  Rossetti,  steeped  in  the  beauty^  filled  with 
the  wonder,  of  Catholic  faith,  yet  there  is  not  in  his 
poems,  nor  in  his  pictures,  the  intense  conviction  of  a 
personally  experienced  belief.  Their  excellence  is  that  of 
a  creative  sympathy.  The  Church,  with  her  hierarchy  of 
saints,  her  ritual  genius,  her  richness  of  appeal  was  to  him, 
as  his  work  shows  him,  only  an  artist :  a  maker  and  pos- 
sessor of  the  most  mysterious  beauty  lin  the  world.  But 
Miss  Rossetti,  in  her  sacred  poems,  brings  together  all  the 
elements  of  art's  excellence  and  of  a  Christian's  faith. 
Their  chief  note,  their  unique  interest  and  delight,  is  a 
tenderness  in  them,  a  tremulous  and  wistful  beauty  of 
adoration  rising  and  passing,  at  times,  into  something  like  a 
very  joyous  adoration  of  friend  by  friend.  Sed  quid  iiiveni- 
entibus !  we  think.  This  is  more  than  imagination ;  it  is 
nothing  else  than  vision.  And  with  this  sense  of  attaining 
and  perceptive  faith  comes  a  further  sense  of  absolute 
reality  :  Dante,  Bunyan,  Swedenborg,  are  not  more  con- 
vincing in  their  cited  circumstance.  The  Paradisal  ima- 
geries, crowns,  palms,  flames,  all  the  ''  furniture  of  heaven," 
become  to  us  in  her  poetry  as  real,  visible,  tangible,  as 
altars  upon  earth ;  the  golden  trumpets  and  harps,  the 
multitudinous  music  of  the  saints  and  angels,  ring  through 


THE  SOUL  OF  SACRED  POETRY  I17 

the  triumphing  chaunts  of  her  later  verse.  But  it  is  a 
lyrical,  a  momentary  power,  which  touches  the  heart  of 
mystery,  sings  it,  and  falls  silent ;  not  the  prolonged  utter- 
ance of  a  pilgrim  travelling  the  far-off  land.  As  in  the 
profound  interior  sympathy,  the  learned  mysticism  of  the 
greatest  Latin  hymns,  the  succession  of  her  sacred  poems 
becomes  a  tragedy,  lyric  upon  lyric  developing  the  sweet 
and  bitter  theme :  the  lilies,  and  the  thorns,  the  incense 
and  the  ointment,  the  tears  and  the  jubilation,  the  prostrate 
penitent  and  the  redeemed  in  glory,  all  do  their  part, 
helping  forward  the  ritual  of  Christian  life,  adorning  the 
times  and  seasons  of  meditation.  There  are  poems  of  hers 
with  a  homely  carolling  air  about  them,  in  their  grace  and 
sweetness,  as  though  they  were  {salva  reverentia)  the 
nursery  songs  of  Heaven.  There  are  poems,  metrically 
and  imaginatively  marvellous,  surging  and  sweeping  forward 
with  a  splendour  of  movement  to  their  victorious,  their 
exultant  close,  as  though  they  were  the  national  hymns  of 
Heaven.  And  of  all,  those  are  the  most  lovely  and  divine 
which  remind  us  of  Izaac  Walton's  words,  where  he  writes 
concerning  Herbert  and  his  poems : 

*'  He  seems  to  rejoyce  in  the  thoughts  of  that  word  ycsus,  and 
say,  that  the  adding  these  wordes,  wy  Master,  to  it,  and  the  often  repe- 
tition of  them,  seemed  to  perfume  his  minde,  and  leave  an  orientall 
fragrancy  in  his  very  breath." 

And  this  [in  Miss  Rossetti]  without  any  artifice,  any 
forced  treatment  of  ideal  feeling  :  it  is  as  natural  in  its 
beauty  and  its  rare  effect  as  the  loveliness  of  the  FiorettL 
In  all  the  simplicity  there  is  the  mystically  enamoured 
spirit  of  true  theology,  that  flaming  faith  and  love  of 
saints.  It  is  a  little  hard  in  England  to  realize  that  spirit : 
to  see,  in  its  playful  grace,  its  devout  familiarity,  anything 
but  a  quaint  irreverence.  The  severer  poems  of  Miss 
Rossetti,  solemn  with  the  solemnity  of  "  The  Four  Last 
Things,"  are  no  less  alien  from  the  average  EngHsh 
attitude.  .  .  . 


Il8  rOST    LIMINIUM 

That  poetry  of  all  kinds  is  bound  by  law  to  be  beautiful 
seems  obvious.  Yet  how  many  modern  writers  of  religious 
verse  have  written  beautifully?  Their  piety  paralyses  their 
poetic  wits ;  a  dry  formality  of  phrase  besets  them,  a  kind 
of  consecrated  commonplace.  The  rich  loveliness  of  the 
older  divine  poets  is  for  them  a  quaintness  of  conceits, 
lacking  in  pure  simplicity.  They  do  not  write  as,  for 
example,  a  not  very  notable  poet  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury wrote  upon  St.  Mary  Magdalen  : — 

"The  proud  Egyptian  Queene  her  Romane  guest 
(To  express  her  love,  in  height  of  state  and  pleasure) 
With  pearl  dissolv'd  in  gold  did  feast ; 

Both  food  and  treasure. 
And  now,  dear  Lorde  !  thy  lover,  on  the  faire 
And  silver  tables  of  thy  feet,  behold  ! 
Pearl  in  her  teares,  and  in  her  hair 
Offers  thee  gold." 

Surely  most  beautiful  in  thought  and  word ;  if  fantastic, 
it  is  the  fantasy  of  saints  who  cannot  think  or  write  of 
high  things  with  aridity,  frigidity,  primness,  but  search 
out  beauty,  even  of  words,  as  a  gift  due  to  God.  As  time 
proceeds,  the  authorities  over  public  worship  lend  to 
become  tasteless :  we  have  Renaissance  ecclesiastics  ruin- 
ing the  mediaeval  hymns,  we  have  Wesleyan  divines  taking 
his  peculiar  merits  out  of  Wesley.  A  supposed  "cor- 
rectness" of  expression  in  singing  of  the  Alpha  and 
Omega,  the  Ancient  of  Days,  the  One  and  All  from  Ever- 
lasting, has  clipped  the  wings  of  the  Christian  Urania, 
and  reduced  her  soarings  to  a  Sunday-school  jog-trot  of 
trite  and  sanctioned  phrases.  It  is  as  though  originality 
in  the  poetry  of  faith  were  a  dangerous  thing,  and  sensuous 
beauty  of  expression  in  dwelling  upon  things  celestial  and 
supersensuous  to  be  condemned.  This  timidity  in  the 
matter  of  beauty  proceeds  in  part  from  timidity  in  the 
matter  of  imagination. 

In  this  point  Dante  is  the  supreme  master  of  sublimity, 


THE  SOUL  OF  SACRED  POETRY  IIQ 

who  is  not  afraid  to  describe  the  seat  of  the  Eternal  Light, 
the  central  abyss  or  sea  of  Love,  with  as  much  minuteness 
as  any  earthly  place,  yet  not  once  failing  in  the  majesty  and 
mystery  proper  to  so  august  a  theme.  It  is  an  effort  to 
realise  invisible  verities  both  without  vagueness  and  yet  with 
mysteriousness ;  and  this  makes  poetry  in  the  highest. 
The  white  splendours  that  there  are  in  Vaughan  ! 

"I  saw  Eternity  the  other  night, 
Like  a  great  ring  of  pure  and  endlesse  light, 

All  calm,  as  it  was  bright  ; 
'And  round  about  it,  Time  in  hours,  days,  yeares, 

Driven  by  the  spheres, 
Like  a  vast  shadow  mov'd  ;  in  which  the  world 
And  all  her  traine  were  hurl'd." 

Or  listen  to  the  divine  audacity  of  Donne  : 

"At  the  round  earth's  imagined  corners  blow, 
Your  trumpets,  Angells  :  and  arise,  arise 
From  death,  ye  numberless  infinities 
Of  soules,  and  to  your  scattered  bodies  go  !  " 

It  is  as  colossal  in  conception  as  the  "  Last  Judgment " 
of  Michael  Angelo :  or  the  lines  of  the  Dies  Jne  thus 
passionately  rendered  by  Cradshaw  : 

"  O  that  fire  !  before  whose  face 
Heaven  and  earth  shall  find  no  place : 
O  those  eyes  !  whose  angry  light 
Must  be  the  day  of  that  dread  night. 
O  that  trump  !  whose  blast  shall  run 
An  even  round  with  the  circling  sun, 
And  urge  the  murmuring  graves  to  bring 
Pale  mankind  forth  to  meet  his  King." 

Lips  touched  with  a  live  coal  from  the  altar  are  alone 
fired  to  these  ecstasies  of  imagination  :  the  Dream  of 
Gerontius  was  another  such  example  of  the  imagination 
raised  to  the  high  vision  of  faith,  and  "  moving  about  in 
worlds  not  realised,"  yet  in  some  sort  apprehended  by  a 
mystical  intuition.     No  mere  magniloquence  suffices  :  any 


120  POST   LIMINIUM 

ranter  can  hit  upon  a  large  phrase.  It  is  intensity  of 
vision,  Hke  that  of  the  eagle  soaring  against  the  sun.  But 
few  living  poets  see  greatly  and  finely  in  the  Uranian  sort : 
for  who  can  write  with  the  God-lit  glory  of  these  lines  by 
perhaps  the  oldest  of  living  English  mystics,  upon  the  text 
"  There  is  no  God  "  ?— 

"  Thou  art  the  atheist  of  the  world,  and  thou 
Hast  earth  for  star  and  seal  upon  thy  brow  ; 
And  ruin  is  thy  garment,  and  thy  head 
The  loss  of  death  unto  the  second  dead." 


THE   POETS   OF  THE   NINETEENTH 
CENTURY 

[77/e  Daily  Chronicle,  Dec.  27,  1900.] 
The  poets  of  the  nineteenth  century  did  well.  That,  I 
am  convinced,  will  be  the  verdict  of  the  centuries  to  come  : 
also  that,  while  scarcely  one  of  the  nations  did  not  shine  in 
respect  of  poetry,  France  and  England  excelled  the  rest. 
An  age  filled  with  tendencies  and  interests  not  com- 
monly accounted  poetical,  an  age  of  industrialism  and 
exact  science,  has  produced  a  body  of  poetry  marked  by 
nothing  more  notably  than  by  its  imaginativeness,  its 
lesthetic  daring,  its  limitless  dreaming,  its  technical  variety 
and  skill.  The  nineteenth  century  has  in  poetry  risen 
above  the  mainly  placid  levels  of  the  eighteenth;  the 
famous  "returns  "  to  nature  and  romanticism  and  ideaUsm, 
which  the  close  of  that  century  saw  begun  in  England, 
France,  and  Germany,  have  remained  in  undiminished 
force  as  the  chief  springs  and  motives  of  poetry.  And 
though  it  is  possible  to  group  the  poets  of  the  passing 
century  in  schools  and  lines  of  succession,  it  has  been  an 
age  of  intense  individuality  in  art,  rich  in  personalities,  and 
a  very  various  distinction.      But  two  features  have  been 


THE   POETS   OF   THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY  121 

prominent,  both  separately,  and  in  conjunction.  The  poets 
of  the  century  have  been,  in  the  Aristotehan  sense, 
philosophic  poets;  and  they  have  been  cunning  crafts- 
men. It  could  not  with  truth  be  said  of  the  poets  of  the 
last  century  that  we  turn  to  them  for  the  deepest  ex- 
pression of  its  thought ;  it  would  be  very  largely  true  to  say 
it  of  our  own.  It  could  not  be  claimed  that  the  poetic 
craftsmanship  of  the  last  century,  careful  and  perfect  in  its 
kind  as  it  could  be,  was  rich  and  various ;  our  own  has  seen 
born  many  an  "inventor  of  harmonies,"  from  whose  standard 
it  should  be  impossible  for  poetry  to  recede.  A  third,  but 
less  important,  feature  of  the  age  in  poetry  is  its  multi- 
fariousness of  range ;  its  dramatic  reach,  its  romantic  scope  ; 
the  names  of  Hugo  and  Leconte  de  Lisle,  of  Browning  and 
Morris,  conjure  up  a  world  of  imaginative  pageantry,  vast 
realms  new-found  for  poetry.  It  might  be  urged,  without 
excess  of  paradox,  that  for  purposes  of  literary,  as  also  of 
political  survey,  the  nineteenth  century  began  with  the 
last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth.  The  fame  of  many  nine- 
teenth-century poets  was  firmly  established,  or  deserved  to 
be,  in  the  eighteenth.  Germany  of  the  nineteenth  century 
has  produced  no  poet  greater  than  Goethe,  England  none 
greater  than  Wordsworth.  Since  their  appearance,  it  may 
be  said  of  poetry.  Plus  fa  change  phis  c'est  la  meme  chose. 
The  deepening  of  imaginative  thought,  the  emancipation  of 
poetry  from  outworn  conventions,  the  care  for  beauty,  the 
lyrical  impulse,  the  wider  scope  which  distinguish  the  best 
poetry  of  the  century,  came  to  the  birth  before  the  dawn  of 
1801  ;  the  dawn  of  1901  bids  us  look  back  over  many 
combinations  and  variations  of  them,  but  it  opens  upon  no 
new  birth  of  poetry,  no  change  in  its  essentials. 

Poetry  has  been  a  power  during  these  last  hundred 
years ;  it  has  both  expressed  and  excited  their  vague  unrest, 
their  despairs  and  hopes,  their  lookings  backward  and  their 
lookings  forward.  Fletcher  of  Saltoun,  in  his  famous 
saying,  probably  confined  himself  to  poetry  of  the  simplest 


12:;  POST   LIMINIUM 

orders,  immediately  moving ;  but  the  highest  poetry  of  the 
century,  the  most  intellectual  and  ideal,  has  furnished  many 
minds  with  a  kind  of  religion,  and  served  them  as  Words- 
worth served  Mill,  It  is  certainly  untrue  to  say  that  the 
poets  of  the  century  have  in  the  main  written  with  a 
"  purpose,"  a  'propagandist,  impulse  or  intention ;  but  it 
were  equally  untrue  to  say  that  they  have  been  "  idle 
singers  of  an  empty  day."  The  poetry  of  the  age  most 
remote  in  seeming  from  the  age's  character  and  aspect, 
poetry  often  of  an  almost  antiquarian  kind,  given  over  to 
some  resuscitation  of  paganism,  or  to  some  graceful  dalli- 
ance with  the  ways  and  thoughts  of  a  past  generation  and 
age,  testified  in  an  especial  manner  to  the  spirit  of  the 
century,  so  ardent,  so  troubled,  so  in  need  of  solace.  And 
there  have  been  poets  such,  in  England,  as  Mrs.  Browning 
and  Clough,  and  Kingsley  and  Dobell,  whose  work  has  a 
tense  vibration  and  strain,  an  almost  too  faithful  echo  of 
the  age's  aching  thoughts  and  wonders.  Though  there  has 
been  a  welcome  plenty  of  poets  light  and  fanciful  and  play- 
ful, the  nineteenth  century  has  not  been  one  in  which 
poetry  has  been  an  elegant  accomplishment,  a  pretty  trifle, 
a  polite  amusement.  The  aerial  Shelley  would  convert  the 
world  by  his  melody,  by  spiritual  reason  garbed  in  beauty. 
Baudelaire,  aesthete  of  aesthetes,  sings  sermons ;  most  poetry 
of  the  expiring  age  rings  true  to  some  deep  convictions  in 
the  hearts  and  minds  of  its  makers.  But  so  diverse,  so 
variegated  have  been  those  spiritual  and  aesthetic  attitudes 
toward  life  and  art,  that  it  is  not  possible  to  trace  a 
methodical  development  in  the  history  of  the  age's  poets. 
Common  to  all  of  them  is  a  passion  for  poetry,  an  immense 
reverence  for  it,  a  profound  feeling  for  its  dignity,  its 
capacity,  its  high  rank  among  the  possible  expressions  of 
humanity.  It  may  well  be  that  we,  children  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  deceive  ourselves,  and  worship  what  future 
ages  will  discard  and  ignore;  and  yet,  at  heart,  we  feel 
secure  in  our  judgment  that  the  nineteenth  century  is,  in 


THE   POETS   OF   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY  123 

kind,  if  not  in  degree,  a  great  poetic  age,  even  as  the 
Periclean  and  Elizabethan. 

If  we  start  from  Wordsworth  and  Hugo,  we  find  them  but 
the  first  of  a  goodly  poetic  line  in  England  and  France. 
Coleridge,  Landor,  Byron,  Shelley,  Keats,  Tennyson,  Brown- 
ing, Mrs.  Browning,  Arnold,  Rossetti,  Morris,  Patmore  : — 
it  is  no  meagre  list  of  poets  gone  "  where  Homer  and  where 
Orpheus  are,"  and  where  a  host  of  admirable  lesser  con- 
temporaries keep  them  company.  France,  from  Hugo  to 
Verlaine,  boasts  a  line  at  least  equal  to  the  English,  and,  in 
Hugo,  the  chief  writer  of  the  century.  Almost  all  its 
greater  poetry  has  the  note  of  the  ideal,  of  imaginative  and 
speculative  passion ;  even  the  poets  of  whom  Gautier  is  the 
type,  whose  aim  is  to  create  nothing  but  a  lyric  loveliness, 
have  expressed,  through  poetry,  a  pronounced  view  of  life, 
and,  in  the  sensitiveness  of  their  artistic  consciences,  have 
attained  to  something  of  a  "high  seriousness."  The 
century  has  seen  many  forms  of  reaction  from  the  ways  of 
its  predecessor,  the  sceciduin  rationalisticum,  and  its  poetry 
has  been  among  the  foremost.  It  has  taught  us  to  look 
upon  nature  with  new  eyes,  found  fresh  means  of  escape 
from  materialism,  bidden  us  comprehend  the  soul  of  past 
ages,  quickened  our  insight  and  research  into  the  soul  of 
man,  made  both  optimism  and  pessimism  more  profound, 
liberated  verse  from  its  chains,  sung  to  a  larger  music  in  a 
richer  tongue,  insisted  upon  the  mystery  of  things,  restored 
the  spirit  of  romance,  extended  its  provinces  upon  every 
side,  and  helped  it  to  become  a  spiritual  power.  The  voice 
of  Wordsworth,  when  "  in  the  spirit,"  is  as  authoritative  as 
the  voice  of  Darwin  ;  and  since  his  day,  to  quote  Coleridge, 
poets  have  learned  to  "  spread  the  tone,  the  atmosphere,  and 
with  it  the  depth  and  height  of  the  ideal  world,  around 
forms,  incidents  and  situations,  of  which,  for  the  common 
view,  custom  had  bedimmed  all  the  lustre,  had  dried  up 
the  sparkle  and  the  dewdrops."  Even  such  things  as  the 
sombre  negations  of  Leopardi  or  the  bright  impieties  of 


124  POST   LIMINIUM 

Heine  have  upon  them  this  recovered  freshness  and 
sincerity.  And  in  the  depth  of  passion  the  poets  have 
excelled :  Byron,  the  least  perfect  of  great  poets,  taught 
romantic  love  from  Moscow  to  Madrid.  Even  more  than 
music  and  painting,  poetry  has  been  the  fine  flower  of  the 
age's  art ;  and  though  the  world  may  contain  to-day  but  few 
poets,  or  none,  of  the  first  rank,  there  is  no  sign  that 
poetry  is  entering  upon  a  period  of  bankruptcy  or  decay. 
Signs  of  change  there  are,  and  the  twentieth  century  may 
well  see  "things  unattempted  yet"  in  the  province  of 
poetry ;  but  such  signs  are  slight. 

In  nothing  has  the  poetry  of  the  last  hundred  years 
shown  itself  more  profusely,  even  prodigally,  fertile  than  in 
its  intepretation  of  nature.  The  great  elemental  human 
passions  vary  little  from  age  to  age  in  their  essentials,  how- 
ever widely  in  their  internal  circumstances  and  expressions ; 
it  is  otherwise  with  the  relations,  not  of  man  to  man,  but  of 
man  to  nature.  Pantheism,  dangerous  enough  as  an 
intellectual  faith,  has  seemed  the  necessary  attitude  of  the 
century's  poets  toward  the  visible  world  in  all  its  manifes- 
tations :  enraptured  converse  with  the  anima  mu7idi.  Our 
poets  have  left  no  silences,  no  inarticulateness,  in  nature. 
"  Arbres  de  laforet^  vous  coimaissez  m07i  dme!"  cries  Hugo, 
and  almost  all  his  fellow-poets  have  known  like  inter- 
course and  friendship,  with  a  various  intimacy  of  feeling 
felt  by  scarcely  a  poet  of  antiquity,  save  Virgil  and  Lucretius. 
Upon  the  technical  side,  the  century's  poets  have  been 
vastly  inventive,  introducing  countless  novelties  in  construc- 
tion and  rhythm  ;  not  always  without  detriment  to  established 
laws  of  their  art.  The  almost  universal  revulsion  from  the 
classic  or  the  academic  has  produced,  in  America,  for 
example,  that  magnificent  anomaly,  Walt  Whitman,  and  in 
France  a  defiance  of  poetic  conventions,  beside  which  the 
innovations  of  Romanticists  and  Parnassians  seem  timid. 
Contrasted  with  the  poerty  of  the  last  century,  for  the  most 
part  so  orderly  and   unenterprising,  the   poetry  of  this   is 


THE    POETS   OF   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY  1 25 

bewildering  in  its  diversities  of  matter  and  form :  an 
"  Augustan  "  age  of  "  correctness  "  scarcely  seems  to  be  at 
hand,  but  it  may  have  to  come.  It  would  be  hard  to  say 
what  kind  of  poetry  has  been  most  successful  during  these 
hundred  years  of  its  assiduous  cultivation  ;  probably  the 
lyric,  if  a  wide  scope  of  application  be  extended  to  the 
word.  It  has  been  an  emotional  age,  full  of  ferment  and 
agitation,  and  the  "  subtle-souled  psychologists  "  of  poetry 
have  proved  themselves  in  touch  with  it.  The  lyric,  the 
idyll,  the  swift  dramatic  study,  have  been  more  in  favour  than 
works  of  prolonged  elaboration.  Such  works  have  certainly 
not  been  wanting,  but  they  seem  less  characteristic  of  the 
century,  which  in  this  matter  has  tended  more  and  more 
toward  the  conviction  of  Poe,  and  inclined  to  value  most 
highly  the  verse  which  is  a  brief  flight  of  music. 

It  is  noticeable  that  the  lands  of  the  ancient  civilisation 
have  still  no  rivals  in  the  production  of  great  poetry :  the 
British  Colonies  and  the  United  States  can  point  to  no  poet 
of  the  first  order,  and  to  less  than  a  score  of  eminent  merit. 
In  Europe,  Scandinavian  poetry  has  won  its  way  to  the 
world's  ear,  and  Ireland  has,  almost  for  the  first  time,  added 
an  admirable  contribution  to  the  sum  of  English  verse.  I 
do  not  profess  to  explain  why,  of  the  two  countries,  Italy 
and  Germany,  which  have  experienced  most  change  in  the 
body  politic  and  the  conditions  of  life  at  large,  Italy  has 
been  poetically  fertile,  while  Germany  has  not.  The 
unification  of  the  German  States  produced  no  second 
Aufkldrung.  But  the  spirit  of  art  always  "moves  in  a 
mysterious  way,  its  wonders  to  perform,"  and,  though 
essentially  rational,  is  seldom  wholly  explicable.  And  for 
that  reason  prophecy  about  the  future  of  poetry  is  idle,  and 
even  criticism  about  the  past  must  be  but  an  approximation 
to  the  truth.  As  to  the  present,  it  is  with  just  pride  that 
England  can  claim  to  see  the  century  pass  into  the  past,  if 
with  less  poetic  glory  than  adorned  its  birth,  yet,  in  that 
regard,  not  unworthily.     Italy,  with   her   veteran   Carducci 


126  POST   LIMINIUM 

excepted,  no  other  nation,  to  my  imperfect  knowledge,  can 
name  equals  to  Mr.  Swinburne,  Mr.  Meredith,  Mr.  de 
Vere ;  none  possesses  poets  of  younger  generations  more 
promising  than  ours ;  in  none  is  the  average  level  of  aim 
and  accompHshment  higher.  One  prophecy  at  least  is  not 
rash :  poetry  may  often  be  in  abeyance,  but  it  will  never 
die.  Once  it  was  thought  that  physical  science,  the  pressure 
of  material  cares,  discovery  in  its  many  forms,  would  prove 
fatal  to  poetry  :  it  has  not  been  so.  Such  influences  as 
these  may  have  made  poetry  here,  have  failed  to  affect  it 
there,  have  killed  it  nowhere.  "  It  is  dangerous  to  differ  in 
religion  from  the  saints,  in  poetry  from  the  poets  "  :  even 
the  Gradgrinds  of  the  world,  the  hard  utilitarians,  recognise 
uneasily  a  sacrosanctitude  in  poetry,  its  source  in  "  an  ampler 
ether,  a  diviner  air."  The  nineteenth  century  has  done 
homage  to  poetry  :  in  the  case  of  all  its  greatest  poets,  it  has 
been  obedient  to  Dante's  words :  "  Onorate  raltissimo 
poda  !  "  Consoling,  heartening,  uplifting,  delighting,  inspir- 
ing, poetry  puts  forth  its  powers  in  a  profusion  of  ways,  with 
a  catholic  extent  of  range  :  though  it  sing  of  the  most  "  old, 
forgotten,  far-off  things,"  its  beauty  has  a  direct  relevance 
to  its  day,  and  provides  an  escape  into  the  infinite.  The 
poets  of  the  nineteenth  century,  who  have  explored  all  ages, 
and  sung  of  all  things  from  the  Pyramids  to  the  steam- 
engine,  are  among  its  most  potent  forces.  And  we  may  be 
thankful  that  the  Muse  of  the  dying  century  has  chiefly  been 
the  Uranian,  a  cause  of  spiritual  jo)'',  a  teller  of  the  whitest 
dreams.  A  troublous  age,  crowded  with  eventfulness,  has 
bequeathed  to  the  unborn  ages  nothing  more  imperishable 
and  precious  than  its  golden  harvest  of  poetry  :  in  that 
matter,  at  least,  it  may  die  with  a  mind  at  peace. 


RENAN    TRULY   SHEWN  1 27 

RENAN  TRULY  SHEWN* 

[The  Academy :  Nov.  20,  1897.] 
Mme.  Darmesteter  has  already  proved  in  her  admirable 
Froissart  that  her  art  as  a  biographer  is  a  rare  and  dis- 
tinguished art.  In  her  short  volume  on  Renan  she  ofifers 
us,  with  delicacy  and  reticence,  a  full  presentment  of  a 
genius  so  "  undulary  and  diverse  "  as  his.  As  a  rule,  the 
absent  quality  of  the  prose  of  most  women  writers  is  charm. 
They  may  write  brilliantly,  they  may  write  profoundly, 
tenderly,  gracefully,  cleverly,  eloquently.  The  vast  structure 
of  English  literature  shows  us,  in  feminine  work,  triumphs 
in  each  of  these  styles.  But  the  elusive,  penetrative  flavour 
that  wins  us  with  its  enchantment,  which  we  define  as 
"  charm,"  is  rarely  to  be  found  here.  Perhaps  it  is  because 
women  are  usually  more  concerned  with  what  they  have  to 
say  than  with  the  manner  in  which  they  shall  say  it ;  are 
too  satisfied  with  the  hasty  and  imperfect  telling  ;  too  restive 
and  precipitate ;  too  remorselessly  the  idle  victims  of  their 
own  cleverness  and  fluency  to  heed  the  mellowing  influence 
of  slow  production.  For  charm  in  prose  is  something 
infinitely  more  than  a  matter  of  temperament,  however  large 
a  part  this  may  play  in  its  development.  Hence  such  a 
book  as  Mme.  Darmesteter's  comes  with  a  double  claim 
upon  our  gratitude.  It  is  interpenetrated  with  the  dignity 
and  sweetness,  the  mild,  bright,  classical  grace  of  form  and 
treatment,  that  Renan  himself  so  loved ;  and  it  fulfils  to  the 
uttermost  the  delicate  and  difficult  achievement  it  sets  out 
to  accomplish.  .  .  . 

In  this  biography  one  hardly  knows  what  to  praise  most : 
the  large  and  easy  treatment,  the  delicate  reserve,  or  the 
subtle  distinction  of  its  style.  Renan  in  English,  clothed 
in  all  his  French  graces  and  charms  : — this  is  no  ordinary 

*  Renan.  By  Mme.  Darmesteter  (A.  Mary  F.  Robinson).  London. 
Methuen,  1897. 


128  POST    LIMINIUM 

literary  achievement.  And  add  to  this  purely  literary 
triumph  the  more  valuable  qualities  of  veracity,  of  faithful 
presentment,  of  adequate  analysis  on  a  broad  and  sympa- 
thetic basis,  and  you  have  a  work  whose  solid  worth  is  at 
least  as  great  as  the  measured  and  musical  beauty  of  its 
form.  .  .  .  We  have  here  the  whole  Renan,  a  glint  of  each 
facet  of  his  variable  genius,  set  in  a  frame  admirably  suited 
to  so  fascinating  a  subject ;  and  if  the  setter's  hand  be  that 
of  a  friend,  the  reader  gains  by  a  suggestive  and  subtle 
sympathy. 

Take  the  pages  with  which  this  distinguished  work  opens ; 
and  you  will  meet  the  truth  about  the  poetic  and  unsatis- 
factory Celt  and  his  rain-deluged,  misted  corners  of  the 
earth.  How  vividly,  if  quietly,  Mme.  Darmesteter  interprets 
both  land  and  race  ! — 

"Remember  not  only  the  gaunt  and  solitary  aspect  of  the  place, 
but  the  kind  of  persons  who  dwell  in  these  small  grey  cities,  at  once 
so  damp  and  so  scantily  foliaged  under  the  incessant  droppings  of  the 
uncertain  heaven.  There  is  a  great  indifference  to  worldly  things. 
And  the  dreamer  (we  may  count  him  as  ten  per  cent,  of  the  population) 
be  he  poet,  saint,  beggar,  or  merely  drunkard, — is  capable  of  a  pure 
detachment  from  material  interests  which  no  Buddhist  sage  could 
surpass.  There  is  a  vibrating  '  other  worldliness '  in  the  air ;  the 
gift  of  prayer  is  constant,  religious  eloquence  the  brightest  privilege, 
and  religious  fervour  a  commonplace.  Yet,  all  round,  in  the  high 
places  and  the  country  holy  wells,  Mab  and  Merlin,  the  fairies  and  the 
witches,  keep  their  devotees.  And  over  all  the  grey,  veiled,  melancholy 
distinction  which  first  strikes  us  as  the  note  of  such  a  place,  there  is  the 
special  poetic  Celtic  quality,  the  almost  immaterial  beauty  which  has 
so  lingering  a  charm." 

And  again,  of  the  people  among  whom  Renan  was  born  : 

"  The  Breton  race,  apparently  so  severe,  is  one  of  the  most  pleasure- 
loving,  and  one  of  the  most  garrulous  in  France  :  a  very  storehouse  of 
myth  and  legend,  of  song  and  story,  of  jest  and  gibe.  These  melan- 
choly men  and  maids,  visible  emblems  of  renunciation,  are  capable  of 
mirth  and  wit  and  passion.  Fond  of  their  glass,  quick  to  repartee,  they 
glory  in  the  gift  of  the  gab,  but  only  when  the  door  is  shut  on  strangers. 
The  extraordinary  strength  of  idealism,  the  infinite  delicacy  of  senti- 
ment, which  form  the  inmost  quintessence  of  the  Celt,  impose  on  him 


RENAN   TRULY   SHEWN  1 29 

an  image  of  seemliness,  a  pure  decorum,  to  which  he  incessantly  con- 
forms the  old  Adam  rebellious  in  his  heart.  Reserve  and  passion, 
prudence  and  poetry,  are  equally  inherent  in  him.  The  very  sinner 
who  transgressed  most  flagrantly  at  last  week's  wake  or  '  Pardon  '  will 
show  to-day  in  every  act  and  every  word  a  serene  tranquillity,  a  justness 
of  thought  and  phrase  which  is  no  more  hypocritical  than  was  the 
passionate  fantasy  of  his  falling  away." 

Mme.  Darmesteter  concludes  this  delightful  introduction 
by  a  paragraph  which  we  must  perforce  quote  : 

"Seven  hundred  years  ago  the  Celtic  poets  invented  a  new  way  of 
loving.  They  discovered  a  sentiment  more  vague,  more  tender,  than 
any  the  Latins  or  the  Germans  knew,  penetrating  to  the  very  source  of 
tears,  and  at  once  an  infinite  aspiration,  a  mystery,  an  enigma,  a  caress. 
They  discovered  '  I'amour  courtois.'  Yesterday  their  descendant, 
Ernest  Renan,  would  fain  have  invented  a  new  way  of  believing.  .  .  • 
The  '  amour  fine '  of  Launcelot  has  passed  from  our  books  into  our 
hearts  ;  we  feel  with  a  finer  shade  to-day,  because  those  Celtic  harpers 
lived  and  sang.  I  dare  not  say  that  Renan  has  done  as  much  for 
Faith :  that  he  has  transported  it  far  from  the  perishable  world  of 
creeds  and  dogmas  into  the  undying  domains  of  a  pure  feeling.  But, 
at  least,  the  attempt  was  worthy  of  a  Celt  and  an  idealist." 

.  .  .  The  skill  with  which  the  central  figure  is  handled  is 
remarkable.  Never  was  subject  more  slippery,  personality 
more  elusive,  in  spite  of  the  clear,  essential  virtues  that 
marked  this  great  modern  heretic  in  the  eyes  of  amazed 
Christendom.  His  life,  as  well  as  his  own  lips,  designed 
his  epitaph  :  Veritatem  dilexi ;  and  somehow,  greatly  as  we 
may  admire  the  directness,  the  disinterestedness  of  that  life, 
its  laboriousness  and  purity,  its  high  endeavour  and  stupen- 
dous achievement,  there  remains  for  us,  inexplicably,  a  point 
of  interrogation  in  the  gentle  and  gracious  irony  of  its 
optimism ;  a  fatal,  underlying  sense  of  the  fragility  of  its 
strength,  a  doubt  of  its  tolerant  sincerity.  Is  it  in  the  nature 
of  creature  so  limited  as  man  to  be  so  broad  and  so  charm- 
ing, so  erudite  and  so  indulgent,  and  still  pursue  truth  as 
his  only  end  ?  Truth  seems  to  us,  justly  or  not,  composed 
of   harsher   and    more   uncompromising   elements.      His 

K 


130  POST    LIMIXIUM 

biographer  is,  like  himself,  so  delicately  persuasive,  that  we 
would  fain  stifle  this  question,  and  not  even  ask  ourselves  if 
the  influence  and  value  of  work  even  so  luminous  as  his 
will  last.      The  secret   of  his   charm   Mme.    Darmesteter 
abundantly  and  conclusively  reveals.     He  possessed  almost 
every  virtue  man  can  consistently  lay  claim  to,  and  death 
itself  found  him,  honoured  and  flattered  and  admired,  with 
words  on  his  dying  lips  as  sage  and  lofty  as  any  his  master, 
Marcus  Aurelius,  could  have  uttered.     But  still  the  doubt 
remains.     As  a  charmer,  as  the  most  exquisite  writer  of 
French  prose,  as  a  man  of  delicate  but  commanding  and 
varied  genius,  he  will,  of  course,  endure  as  long  as  the 
civilised  world  is  susceptible  to  the  beauty  of  a  thing  so 
smooth  and  musical  and  enchanting  as  perfect  French  prose. 
But  as  a  thinker?  a  searcher  of  light?  a  moral  influence 
and  support  ?    This  seems  less  certain.    There  is  too  much 
grace,  too  much  irony,  too  pervasive  and  persuasive  a  charm 
not  to  inspire  distrust.     Even  his  biographer  cannot  hide 
blemishes  that  partake  too  pre-eminently  of  literary  qualities 
not  to  mark  work  of  a  more  exalted  kind.     He  remains 
undoubtedly,  as  she  claims  for  him,  "  the  greatest  man  of 
genius  our  generation  has  known."     But  the  weight  of  his 
genius  is  diminished  by  the  dainty  spirit  of  mockery  he  so 
consistently  reveals.  ...  In  her  criticism  of  his  history  of 
David  and  Solomon,  she  condemningly  notes  his  excessive 
irony  and  his  misplaced  "  actualities,"  which  give  a  grotesque 
air  of  flippancy  to  work  written  with  a  profound  import. 
And  yet,  difficult  as  we  may  find  it  to  believe  that  Renan 
is  quite  sincere,  even  when  he  addresses  us  in  the  noblest 
language,  when  his  whole  being  reveals  itself  to  us  saturated 
with  the  moral  intoxication  of  Christian   virtue   and  the 
beauty  of  faith   (an  intoxication  consistently  fed  by  the 
mild  austerity  of  a  blameless  and  beautiful  life),  we  remain 
willingly  captive  to  his  irresistible  grace,  to  the  bland  and 
exquisite  compulsion  of  his  power.  .  .  .  He  writes  beauti- 
fully on  all  subjects ;  but  no  mood  of  his  can  ever  stifle  the 


THOUGHTS   ON    BACON  I3I 

reader's  underlying  question,  even  when  thoroughly  subju- 
gated by  him  :  Is  he  serious  or  not  ?  Is  he  laughing  in  his 
sleeve?  Am  I  the  subject  of  an  e  xqici site  joke?  One  may 
be  no  less  alive  to  the  penetrating  beauty  of  his  pages, 
partake  not  the  less  in  the  captivating  delight  of  such  a 
supreme  manifestation  of  the  art  of  beguilement  as  his, 
and  consciously  decline  to  accept  the  durability  of  his 
influence. 


THOUGHTS   ON   BACON. 

{^The  Daily  Chronicle,  April  14,  1900.] 

.  .  .  Bacon's  most  splendid  achievement  in  that  English 
tongue  which  he  so  greatly  despised  as  an  instrument  of 
literature,  and  the  most  magnificent  fragment  of  his  impos- 
sible philosophic  dream,  is  not  meat  for  the  multitude ;  but 
the  Essays,  as  their  author  wrote  of  them,  come  "  home 
to  men's  business  and  bosoms."  These  fifty-eight  pieces, 
for  the  most  part,  to  speak  in  paradox,  infinitely  brief,  are 
the  compressed  worldly  wisdom  of  one  whom  it  is  impos- 
sible to  love,  difficult  to  revere,  but,  in  the  Latin  sense, 
necessary  to  "admire."  No  man,  save  that  loyal  fanatic 
of  Bacon's  moral  character,  Mr.  Spedding,  has  ever  pro- 
fessed love  for  "  the  wisest,  brightest,  meanest  of  mankind." 
That  later,  sweeter  essayist,  Charles  Lamb,  was  called  by 
Thackeray  "  Saint  Charles "  ;  no  one  could  call  the  cold, 
corrupt  Lord  Chancellor  "  Saint  Francis." 

The  Bacon  of  the  Essays  belongs  in  spirit  to  that  line 
of  Italian  publicists  and  politicians  which  extends  from 
Machiavelli  to  Crispi ;  his  worldly  wisdom  is  a  profound, 
unemotional  calculation,  set  down  in  sentences  of  a  massy 
gold.  Even  when  he  turns  to  some  theme  less  liable  to 
human  taint  than  passions  and  ambitions,  even  when  he 
expatiates  upon  gardens  and  masques  and  building,  it  is 


132  POST    LIMINIUM 

Still  without  "  a  pure  natural  joy  "  ;  the  discourses,  for  all 
their  charm,  have  something  of  the  State  Paper  about  their 
terse  precision  of  precept.  He  may  merit  all  the  applauses 
paid  him  ;  we  may  bow  the  head  in  acquiescence  when 
the  youthful  George  Herbert  dubs  him  "  Colleague  of  the 
Sun  "  ;  we  may  forget  that,  as  his  arch-enemy  Blake  has  it, 
"  King  James  was  Bacon's  primum  mobile  •  "  but  his  in- 
veterate shrewdness,  his  constant  pompous  prudence,  his 
solemn  looking  to  the  main  chance,  his  knowledge  of  men 
without  love  of  them,  make  him  an  oppressive  companion. 

That  famous  Irishman  and  convict,  John  Mitchel,  called 
him  an  "intellectual  chimera;"  certainly  in  his  Essays 
he  too  often  appears  a  moral  and  spiritual  chimera.  When 
he  writes  of  love  and  friendship,  writes  of  them  with  a  cun- 
ning, calm,  and  cool  mediocrity  of  feeling,  it  is  hard  to 
believe  that  he  was  ever  in  love  or  had  a  single  friend. 
And  upon  less  personal  and  intimate  themes,  upon  state- 
craft, legislation,  judicature,  war,  he  dwells  with  a  monoto- 
nous magnificence  of  common  sense,  until  the  reader  of  his 
Thucydidean  or  Tacitean  oracles  longs  for  the  lovable 
waywardness  of  Montaigne,  longs  to  escape  from  Bacon's 
workmanlike  council  chamber  to  the  turret  library  of  Sieur 
Michel.  His  permanent  appeal  in  the  Essays  lies  in  his 
incomparable  strength  and  weightiness  of  phrase  ;  it  is  easy 
to  execrate  the  meaning  or  message  of  his  brief  meditations, 
whilst  wondering  at  their  superb  manner,  their  haughty 
reticence  and  restraint.  Rich  with  classic  and  historic 
instances  and  illustration,  teeming  and  pregnant  with  unde- 
livered inner  meanings,  majestic  in  their  disdain  of  super- 
fluities, the  great  sentences  pass  in  procession  with  an  air 
of  proud  assurance.  "  Thus  thought  Francis  Bacon  !  "  seems 
inscribed  at  the  close  of  every  essay.  Their  gnomic  utter- 
ances are  monumental  in  their  cumulative  effect,  and  wear 
an  aspect  of  finality  ;  they  proceed  from  a  deep  pondering, 
a  profound  brooding ;  they  are  the  visa  et  cogitata  of  one 
whose  mind  knows  no  holiday.     Tennyson  has  transferred 


THOUGHTS   ON   BACON  1 33 

to  Bacon  Dante's  proud  praise  of  Aristotle  :  "  master  of 
those  who  know." 

Aristotle  had  a  loftier  knowledge  of  high  things  than  had 
Bacon ;  but,  at  least,  remembering  the  boundless  promises 
and  prophecies  of  the  Instauratio  Magna ^  the  Advafice- 
ment  of  Learnings  the  Novtcm  Orga7ion,  we  may  well  call 
Bacon  master  of  those  who  desire  knowledge.  But  in 
the  Essays  we  have  the  experience  and  convictions,  not 
of  one  "  voyaging  through  deep  seas  of  thought  alone,"  not 
of  the  "  master  and  interpreter  of  nature,"  but  of  the  man 
immersed  in  affairs,  conversant  with  courts  of  royalty  and 
law,  observant  of  daily  life,  attentive  to  the  teachings  of 
the  visible  world.  We  are  here  far  from  the  dethroner  of 
Aristotle  and  Aquinas,  and  in  the  presence  of  a  less  pre- 
tentious, but  much  more  practical  spirit.  And  the  ripe 
harvest  of  such  experience  is  to  be  reaped  from  the 
Essays :  not  always  a  very  noble  load  of  doctrine  and 
advice,  but  always  the  result  of  a  careful  mental  culture. 
The  Essays  are  impressive  :  it  seems  a  weak  and  simple 
thing  to  say,  but  no  other  word  is  equally  exact.  Bacon  is 
the  first  English  essayist. 

Now,  we  are  rightly  wont  to  think  of  the  essay  as  a  some- 
what light-mannered,  delicate,  even  whimsical  thing  ;  or,  if 
not  quite  that,  as  depending  essentially  upon  grace  and 
charm  for  its  persuasiveness.  There  is  none  of  this  in 
Bacon ;  he  is  as  incapable  of  jesting  as  (whatever  he  may 
say)  was  Pilate.  His  sagacious  brevities  of  meditation  and 
exposition  are  immeasurably  serious.  A  great  artist  of  our 
day,  unconsciously  echoing  Reynolds,  once  declared  that 
he  did  not  ask  two  hundred  guineas  for  the  labour  of  two 
days,  but  "  for  the  knowledge  of  a  lifetime."  So,  too,  each 
of  these  brief  concentrated  essays  seems  to  contain  the 
composition,  it  may  be,  of  a  few  days  or  hours,  but  is 
assuredly  also  the  distillation  and  fine  essence  of  a  great 
vigilant  experience.  Essays,  in  the  sense  of  a  theme 
variously   and  ingeniously  played  upon  and  worked   out, 


134  POST   LIMINIUM 

they  are  not ;  but  they  are  collections  of  thoughts  compactly 
knit  together,  sometimes  so  tightly  as  to  be  elliptical  and 
obscure.  They  have  become  popular,  but  they  are  not 
light  reading.  Hallam,  indeed,  speaking  of  books  much 
quoted  and  at  the  same  time  much  read,  says  : — 

"  In  this  respect  they  lead  the  van  of  our  prose  literature  ;  for  no 
gentleman  is  ashamed  of  owning  that  he  has  not  read  the  Elizabethan 
writers  ;  but  it  would  be  somewhat  derogatory  to  a  man  of  the  slightest 
claim  to  polite  letters,  were  he  unacquainted  with  the  Essays  of  Bacon." 

Pithy,  pungent,  emphatic,  couched  in  a  panoply  of  sonorous 
phrases,  they  embody  the  worldly  ■w'isdom  of  him  whom, 
rightly  or  wrongly,  we  have  come  to  regard  as  the  prince  of 
English  sages,  if  not,  in  the  strong  words  of  Pope,  ''the 
greatest  genius  that  England  (or  perhaps  any  country)  ever 
produced."  In  this  time  of  war  and  of  imperial  conceptions, 
it  is  amusing  and  good  to  peruse  Bacon  upon  *'  Empire  " 
and  "  The  True  Greatness  of  Kingdoms."  Whatever  be 
our  personal  views,  does  it  not  seem  as  though  the  prescient 
Bacon,  in  the  following  words,  had  foreseen  our  present 
controversies  ? 

*'  Neither  is  the  opinion  of  some  of  the  schoolmen  to  be  received 
that  a  war  cannot  justly  be  made  but  upon  a  precedent  injur)'  or  pro- 
vocation. For  there  is  no  question  but  a  just  fear  of  an  imminent 
danger,  though  there  be  no  blow  given,  is  a  lawful  cause  for  war." 

Such  problems,  and  all  matters  of  subtle  contention  among 
states  and  men,  all  things  concerning  the  secular  tangible 
world  and  its  social  structure,  fascinated  the  penetrating 
mind  of  Bacon  :  he  lets  fall,  or  jots  down,  some  royally 
sententious  statement  of  his  thought,  and  after-ages  find  it  a 
rich  and  fruitful  saying.  Not  for  any  revelation  of  his  own 
deplorable  personality  do  we  study  and  prize  these  Essays , 
but  because  they  transmute  into  a  stately  dignity  of  deep 
speech  a  world  of  mundane  wisdom,  operative  to-day ; 
and  interspersed  with  that,  sound  organ  chords  of  a  diviner 
kind,  wherein  Bacon  confesses  to  an  adoring  ignorance, 
sublimer  than  all  his  knowledge. 


THOUGHTS   ON   BACON  1 35 

No  antagonism  to  Bacon's  philosophy,  no  contempt  for 
his  character,  can  blind  us  to  his  literary  splendour.  Speak- 
ing of  him  in  a  somewhat  different  connection.  Cardinal 
Newman  has  said  :  "  Moral  virtue  was  not  the  line  in  which 
he  undertook  to  instruct  men  ;  and  though,  as  the  poet  calls 
him,  he  were  the  '  meanest '  of  mankind,  he  was  so  in  what 
may  be  called  his  private  capacity,  and  without  any  prejudice 
to  the  theory  of  induction."  The  Advancement  of  Learning 
is  partly  a  great  leap  in  the  dark,  an  inspired  profession 
of  faith,  partly  a  parade  of  arrogance  towards  the  past ;  but 
its  style  is  magisterial  and  kingly.  Such  things  as  the 
renowned  passage  upon  poetry  rival  Hooker's  panegyric 
upon  law;  and  the  whole  unfinished  work  is  full  of  sustained 
and  rolling  "  magnality "  of  eloquence,  most  suited  to  a 
prophet.  In  this  work  we  forget  that  its  writer  was,  as 
Dean  Church  has  it,  "  one  of  the  poorest  and  most  un- 
generous of  characters  "  ;  we  feel,  with  the  same  fine  critic, 
that  "  his  is  a  sort  of  poetical  inauguration  of  science." 

And  in  the  Essays,  whereof  the  themes  range  from  the 
august  to  the  trivial,  we  feel  a  certain  grandeur  of  imagination, 
which  half  consecrates  and  ennobles  the  most  cynical  and 
time-serving  counsels,  the  least  elevated  precepts.  As 
Hazlitt  says,  "his  writings  have  the  gravity  of  prose  with 
the  fervour  and  vividness  of  poetry."  There  lies  before  us 
a  copy  of  the  Advancement  from  the  library  of  Pope, 
and  it  reminds  us,  not  for  the  first  time,  how  a  glory  of 
style,  be  it  Elizabethan  solemn  majesty,  or  Augustan 
polished  nicety,  can  cover  a  multitude  of  its  master's  sins. 
Bacon  invested  everything  with  the  trappings  of  nobility, 
and  his  voice  never  falls  from  its  tone  of  authority  and 
command;  like  the  incomparably  more  venerable  Milton, 
he  never  relaxes  the  dignity  of  his  self-expression. 

Though  one  be  convinced  that  or  this  utterance  is  no 
worthy  truth,  yet  it  is  uttered  as  though  from  Sinai,  with  a 
laconic  imperiousness.  A  hundred  sayings  of  Pascal, 
poignant  with  the  aching  of  a  mortified  humanity,  come 


136  POST   LIMINIUM 

nearer,  sink  deeper,  into  our  hearts;  but  Pascal  is  our 
fellow-suffering  brother,  Bacon  a  mighty  alien  to  us,  speak- 
ing with  an  unshakable  assurance  and  self-sufficiency.  And 
our  last  thought  of  him  is  Landor's.  In  an  "  Imaginary 
Conversation  "  between  Bacon  and  Hooker,  Bacon  makes 
confession  that  though  he  had  laboured  to  bring  men  to  all 
manner  of  profitable  studies,  and  had  toiled  at  them  him- 
self, yet  "  one  hath  almost  escaped  me ;  and  surely  one 
worth  trouble."  Asks  Hooker  :  "  Pray,  my  lord,  if  I  am 
guilty  of  no  indiscretion,  what  may  it  be?"  Answers 
Bacon  :  '*  Francis  Bacon." 

BOSWELL 

[The  Academy,  Sept.  18,  1897.] 
"I  WILL  be  myself!"  cried  Boswell  on  his  return  from 
Corsica :  the  cry  is  the  keynote  of  his  whole  life  and 
character.  He  confesses  of  himself,  as  an  author  (or,  to 
adopt  his  cherished  spelling,  "authour"),that  "from  a  certain 
peculiarly  frank,  open,  and  ostentatious  disposition  which 
he  avows,  his  history,  like  that  of  the  old  Seigneur  Michael 
de  Montaigne,  is  to  be  traced  in  his  writings."  Elsewhere, 
in  excuse  for  a  flood  of  irrelevant  egotism,  he  \vrites  :  "  to 
pour  out  all  myself  as  old  Montaigne,  I  wish  all  this  to  be 
known."  With  Montaigne,  Boswell  might  have  declared 
that,  "in  favour  of  the  Huguenots,  who  condemn  private 
confession,  I  confess  myself  in  public  " ;  or  again  :  *'  I  have 
no  other  end  in  writing  than  to  discover  myself."  Himself, 
truly ,  and  to  discover  others,  not  otherwise  than  as  he  dis- 
covered himself,  with  their  "  warts,"  as  Cromwell  said, 
their  eccentricities  and  asperities,  their  public  fame  and 
their  private  peculiarity  :  he  would  not  "  make  a  tiger  a 
cat  to  please  anybody,"  nor  confine  himself  to  "grave 
Sam,  and  great  Sam,  and  solemn  Sam,  and  learned  Sam." 
"  For,"  said  he,  with  absolute  conviction,  "  curiosity  is  the 
most   prevalent   of   all   our  passions " ;    and  curiosity,    in 


BOSWELL  137 

more  than  its  limited  modern  sense.  He  meant  by  it  an 
unflagging,  incessant,  insatiable  interest  in  life,  an  hatred 
of  dulness  and  inattention,  of  waste  moments  and  sluggish 
hours;  a  craving  to  make  each  act  and  occupation  con- 
tribute of  its  value  to  his  mind  or  senses ;  a  dramatic 
instinct  of  seizing  upon  the  quickest,  liveliest,  fullest 
aspect  of  things ;  an  unconquerable  determination  to  make 
the  most  of  life,  to  see  and  hear  and  taste  and  feel,  to  be 
unlike  "old  Mr.  Edwards  of  Pembroke."  To  this  he 
would  sacrifice  self-respect,  and  cast  off  dignity,  and  court 
rebuffs ;  but  he  knew  what  he  was  doing,  and  why  he  did 
it :  he  was  not  Gray's  or  Macaulay's  genius  by  accident, 
fool  by  nature.  He  let  nothing  escape  him  ;  he  must  ever 
be  enjoying  some  emotion  or  sensation.  He  "  cannot 
resist  the  serious  pleasure  of  writing  to  Mr.  Johnson  from 
the  tomb  of  Melancthon.  My  paper  rests  upon  the  tomb 
of  that  great  and  good  man."  What  a  picture  !  Here 
is  another  :  At  the  Duke  of  Argyll's,  after  his  Hebridean 
adventures,  he  can 

"never  forget  the  impression  made  upon  my  fancy  by  some  of  the 
ladies'  maids  tripping  about  in  neat  morning  dresses.  After  seeing 
for  a  long  time  little  but  rusticity,  their  lively  manner  and  gay  inviting 
appearance  pleased  me  so  much  that  I  thought  for  a  moment  I  could 
have  been  a  knight-errant  foi  them." 

Abroad,  and  breaking  all  his  father's  express  conditions  of 
residence  and  study,  he,  Jimmy  Boswell,  finds  "  borne  in 
upon  him"  the  words  of  St.  Paul:  "I  must  see  Rome." 
Language  is  inadequate  to  deal  with  that.  Again,  in  dis- 
regard of  his  wife's  claims  and  father's  wishes,  he  wants  to 
go  a-gadding  up  to  town,  because  keeping  Easter  at  St. 
Paul's  is  like  keeping  the  Passover  at  Jerusalem.  Assuredly 
he  never  kept  his  Passover  with  bitter  herbs.  He  tells 
Rousseau  that  there  are  points  ou  nos  ames  sont  unies  :  he 
tells  Paoli  that  •'  with  a  mind  naturally  inclined  to  melan- 
choly and  a  deep  desire  of  inquiry,  I  have  intensely 
applied   myself    to   metaphysical    researches."      He   tells 


138  POST   LIMINIUM 

Chatham  that  his  Lordship  has  "  filled  many  of  my  best 
hours  with  the  noble  admiration  which  a  disinterested  soul 
can  enjoy  in  the  bowers  of  philosophy.  .  .  .  Could  your 
Lordship  find  time  now  and  then  to  honour  me  with  a 
letter?"  Always,  as  he  admits,  "that  favourite  subject 
myself ;"  yet  almost  heroically  so,  even  when  impudently 
so  :  an  occasional  letter  from  Chatham  would  be  a  zest,  an 
excitement,  a  distinguished  pleasure  to  the  youth  under 
thirty,  and  therefore — he  asks  for  it !  It  is  not  mere  pure 
conceit  and  ill-breeding  :  it  is  an  invincible  vivacity.  You 
can  almost  see  him  reckoning  up,  as  it  were,  on  his  plump 
fingers,  his  eminent  acquaintances,  the  cities  and  courts 
that  he  has  visited,  his  writings  and  flirtations  and  experi- 
ences in  general :  they  are  his  treasures  and  his  triumphs. 
The  acquisition  of  Johnson  was  but  the  greatest  of  them 
all,  his  crowning  achievement :  all  his  life  was  devoted  to 
social  coups  d'etat.  To  hear  service  in  an  Anglican  cathe- 
dral ;  to  attend  an  exceptionally  choice  murderer  to  the 
gallows;  to  contrive  a  meeting  between  Johnson  and 
Wilkes;  to  sing  a  comic  song  of  his  own  composition 
before  Mr.  Pitt  at  a  City  feast ;  to  pray  among  the  ruins  of 
lona,  and  to  run  away  for  fear  of  ghosts ;  to  turn  Roman 
Catholic,  and  immediately  to  run  away  with  an  actress ; 
each  and  all  of  these  performances  were  to  him  sensational, 
enlivening,  vivid.  This  versatile  little  Ulysses  of  Scotland 
refused 

"  To  rust  unburnished,  not  to  shine  in  use, 

As  though  to  breathe  were  life  !     Life  piled  on  life 

Were  all  too  little." 

Bustling,  breathless,  bragging,  he  had  endless  day-dreams 
and  castles  in  Spain ;  there  was  a  piteous  kind  of  courage 
even  in  his  last  years  of  drunkenness  and  disappointment, 
when  weakness  and  absurdity  grew  upon  him,  and  the 
world  thought  him  a  maudlin  bore  or  buffoon.  He  would 
not  give  up  the  chase  after  his  ambitions,  would  not  rest 
upon  his  laurels,  upon  the  fame  of  his  great  biography : 


BOSWELL  139 

he  was  as  full  of  schemes  and  projects  as  when  he  dared 
the  dangers  of  Corsica,  and  talked  heroics  with  Paoli.  A 
very  quaint  man,  a  very  ludicrous  man,  but  certainly  a 
great  man  :  causes  and  effects  must  be  commensurable, 
and  the  Boswell  of  BosweWs  Johnson,  that  splendid  and 
unique  creation,  cannot  have  been  no  more  than  a  prying, 
impertinent,  besotted,  brainless  busybody,  a  meddling, 
mannerless,  self-important  little  chatterer,  with  a  big  note- 
book and  a  good  memory.  Men  "don't  do  such  things" 
as  write  masterpieces  without  a  master's  ability.  Certain 
critics,  who  see  the  dissimilarities  between  a  great  artist's 
life  and  his  work,  are  fond  of  denying  to  the  artist  the  merit 
of  his  art :  it "  came  by  chance,"  half  unconsciously.  To  that 
we  may  apply  Johnson's  wise  and  reiterated  conviction,  so 
often  asserted  in  subtler  forms  by  Newman,  and  accepted 
by  all  experts  in  human  nature,  that  there  may  be  good 
principles  without  good  practice  :  if  that  be  true  in  religion, 
the  converse  is  true  in  art.  Johnson's  own  grave  and  stately 
writings  are  the  work  of  one,  upon  his  own  confession,  not 
quite  sane  all  his  life;  Addison,  v/ith  his  pure  and  lucid 
prose,  was  an  habitual  tippler;  Lamb,  that  master  of  fine 
graces,  was  to  Carlyle  a  sorry  drunkard  playing  the  fool. 
And  Boswell,  because  of  his  failings  and  absurdities,  is  not 
to  be  given  the  credit  of  the  undoubted  work  of  genius  in 
which  he  records  them  !  Illogical  injustice  could  surely  no 
farther  go  :  it  is  assommant.  We  shall  be  told  that  Gold- 
smith and  Steele  wrote  their  exquisite  works  because  they 
were  wild,  irresponsible,  unmethodical  Irishmen,  obviously 
incapable  of  producing  such  perfection  proprio  mohi  and 
voluntate  sua.  Art  is  not  an  Indian  juggler's  trick  of 
producing  fruit  and  flowers  out  of  empty  space ;  and  as  for 
the  critics,  who  seem  to  think  so  of  Boswell,  qtte  messieurs 
les  critiques  commencent !  It  is  not  so.  As  a  man,  according 
to  Johnson  and  St.  Paul,  may  sincerely  hold  good  principles, 
yet  be  unable  to  "  wear  them  out  in  practice,"  as  Topham 
Beauclerk  said,  so  a  fine  writer  may  show  in  his  writings  a 


14©  POST   LIMINIUM 

thousand  virtues  of  proportion,  sobriety,  tact,  good  sense, 
utterly  lacking  in  his  conduct.  And  curiosity,  Boswell's 
absorbing  passion,  is  a  feature  in  his  hfe  and  conduct  which 
docs  go  far  towards  accounting  for  the  excellences  of  his 
masterpiece.  His  instinct  of  selection,  his  presentment  of 
choice  scenes,  his  dramatic  directness,  his  infinitely  felicitous 
touch  upon  trifles,  his  unrivalled  skill  in  detail,  come 
naturally  from  a  man  who  cared  so  supremely  for  rare  and 
savoursome  experiences  in  life.  He  does  not  weary  us  with 
descriptions  of  dull  dinners  and  reports  of  insipid  talk, 
because  he  hated  such  things ;  he  gives  us  Johnson  and  the 
rest  in  all  their  lifelike  reality,  not  excluding  the  odd  and 
the  grotesque,  because  it  was  just  that  piquant  reality 
which  he  loved,  sought  out,  remembered.  He  gives  us 
information  about  himself  to  his  own  disadvantage,  because 
such  personal  information,  which  helps  to  show  the  man,  he 
loved  to  have  of  others.  Johnson  "  tosses  him,"  turns  and 
rends  him,  covers  him  with  confusion.  What  then  !  It 
was  magnificent,  Johnson  at  his  best ;  and  Boswell  wants  to 
show  Johnson  at  his  best,  in  all  his  glory,  the  Great  Man. 
He  relished  his  own  rebuffs  and  discomfitures  ;  as  for  his 
own  weaknesses,  well,  he  wants  us  to  see  himself  also  as  he 
was,  exceedingly  human :  no  stiff,  bloodless,  academic 
person,  but  Boswell  of  the  tender  conscience,  the  good 
intentions,  and  the  frequent  fall.  So  we  have  Boswell  the 
theological,  Boswell  the  bibulous,  Boswell  the  feudal,  Bos- 
well the  cosmopolitan, — all  the  Boswells.  We  miss  neither 
the  Boswell  who  perpetually  discussed  predestination,  nor 
the  Boswell  who  sometimes  adhccsit  pavimento.  But  the 
art  of  it  !  Reading  Boswell's  half-humorous,  half-serious 
apologies  or  reasons  for  recording  uncouth  or  ridiculous 
sayings  and  doings,  his  own  or  others',  we  cannot  deny  that 
he  had  full  right  to  say  of  his  Life  what  Johnson  said  of 
his  Dicliotiary  :  "  Sir,  I  knew  very  well  what  I  was  under- 
taking, and  very  well  how  to  do  it ;  and  have  done  it  very 
well." 


BOSWELL  141 

"  What  a  pedant,"  wrote  Mr,  Matthew  Arnold,  of  Cicero, 
to  Mr.  John  Morley,  "  is  Mommsen,  who  runs  this  charming 
personage  down  ! "  What  a  pedant,  one  is  inchned  to  say, 
must  he  be  who  shrinks  from  an  honest  admiration  and 
affection  for  Boswell !  In  many  ways  a  small,  an  un- 
dignified, a  preposterous  man,  but  never  a  mean^  idiotic, 
vulgar  man.  He  knew  all  the  weak  and  laughable  sides 
of  his  own  character ;  and  that  safeguards  him.  So  abject 
a  fool  and  vain  a  toady  as  Macaulay  imagines  him,  could 
have  had  no  sense  of  humour,  no  subtlety  of  perception,  no 
delicacy  of  characterisation  :  still  more,  he  could  not  have 
had  the  friendship  of  Johnson  and  the  Club.  Johnson  was 
the  tenderest  of  mankind,  and  protected  in  long-suffering 
patience  many  a  querulous  or  unattractive  pensioner  upon 
his  charity  and  inmate  under  his  roof;  but  Johnson  endur- 
ing, and  more,  inviting,  the  companionship  of  a  fool  and 
toady,  and  that  a  Scotsman,  is  unthinkable.  Why  the 
world  should  be  so  unwilling  to  take  what  Thackeray  calls 
"  the  more  kindly  and  the  more  profound  view  "  of  Boswell's 
character,  is  something  of  a  problem.  Doubtless,  he  awakes 
in  us  no  such  ardour  of  love  and  reverent  compassion  and 
caressing  gratitude  as  Goldsmith  and  Lamb  awoke ;  but  he 
is  very  much  our  genial  friend,  our  admired  and  inestimable 
"  Bozzy."  There  is,  perhaps,  a  lurking  sense  that,  despite 
his  title  to  our  gratitude,  he  is  too  undignified,  too  ridiculous. 
Goldsmith  and  Lamb,  that  gentle  pair,  have  something 
pathetic  and  tragic  in  their  sufferings  or  sorrows.  Boswell 
is  too  "  fat  and  well-liking,"  too  self-satisfied  and  assertive, 
too  canny  and  conquering  :  there  is  nothing  sacred  unto 
tears  about  him.  His  failings  and  distempers  are  beautiful 
neither  in  cause  nor  in  effect :  we  do  not  get  beyond  think- 
ing him  a  good  fellow,  and  a  prodigious  able  one.  Johnson, 
thanks  to  Boswell,  we  cannot  but  love  :  Boswell  himself  is 
no  more  than  our  excellent,  shrewd  tavern  friend  or  fellow- 
traveller.  We  would  gladly  have  been  at "  Goldy's  "  death- 
bed ;  we  hardly  think  of  "  Bozzy's."     In  truth,  it  is  hard  to 


143  POST    LIMINIUM 

think  of  him  as  dead,  as  master  of  the  dread  secrets  which 
he  loved  to  peer  into  with  Johnson.  To  us  he  is  still  a 
Londoner,  strutting  off  down  Fleet-street  toward  Johnson's 
quarters,  thinking  with  anticipatory  gusto  of  their  supper  at 
the  Mitre,  and  meditating  how  best  he  shall  put  the  Great 
Man  through  his  paces.  There,  in  the  kindly,  jovial  tavern, 
scdet  aeteriminqit€  sedebit.  St.  Dunstan  may  chime  for  mid- 
night, but  Boswell  sits  there  still  over  the  port  or  punch, 
putting  questions  without  end  to  the  hero  whose  immortality 
he  has  doubled  and  endeared  to  us. 


MR.  HARDY'S  LATER  PROSE  AND  VERSE 

[The  Academy,  Nov.  12,  1898;  l^ie  Outlook,  Jan.  28,  1899.] 

"Ancient  outdoor  crafts  and  occupations,"  writes  Mr. 
Stevenson,  "whether  Mr.  Hardy  wields  the  shepherd's 
crook  or  Count  Tolstoi  swings  the  scythe,  lift  romance  into 
a  near  neighbourhood  with  epic."  It  is  certainly  so  that 
we  love  to  think  of  Mr.  Hardy :  not  as  the  arraigner  of  the 
universe,  greatly  angered  and  distressed  by  its  essential 
flaws,  but  as  the  patient,  poetical  artist,  who  portrays  the 
workings  of  life  under  certain  conditions  of  nature,  society, 
tradition,  dear  and  familiar  to  his  heart's  experience. 
Modern  though  he  be,  and  even  of  an  "advanced" 
modernity,  his  writings  have  a  primitive  savour,  a  tang  of 
antiquity,  an  earthy  charm,  an  affinity,  a  comradeship  with 
nature.  Of  some  among  his  finest  characters  we  say  that 
we  "  see  men  as  trees  walking."  They  are  literal  sons  of 
the  soil,  children  of  the  Earth-Mother.  They  are  effective 
with  the  mysterious  effectiveness  of  nature,  and  the  youngest 
of  them  is  ancient.  The  Mr.  Hardy  of  our  preference  is  a 
writer  of  impassioned  and  beautiful  solemnity.  The  Mr. 
Hardy  of  our  occasional  dislike  is  a  writer  of  querulous 
questioning  and  unrest.     At  times  he  suggests  a  man  who 


MR.    hardy's    later   PROSE    AND    VERSE  1 43 

should  love  to  read  Pascal  with  a  sad  dissatisfaction  and 
Schopenhauer  with  a  sick  content ;  at  times  he  writes  with 
a  rapture  of  lovely  stoicism,  a  lyrical  strength  and  ecstasy, 
in  his  presentation  of  human  life.  He  is  not  to  be  taken, 
as  many  take  him,  for  a  mere  painter  of  country  life ;  nor 
again,  as  many  take  him,  for  a  propagandist  of  social 
theories  and  ethical  speculations.  He  is  of  more  rich, 
profound,  and  universal  a  genius :  in  other  words,  a  great 
writer. 

But  he  is  among  the  least  sentimental  of  writers :  he 

can   offend   and  vex   us  in    many  ways,  but   not  in   that 

abhorrent  way ;  and  his  tragedies  and  comedies  and  farces 

are  invariably  virile,  strenuous,  full  of  nerve  and  vigour. 

Facile   popularity  does   not   follow  such   a  writer;  highly 

intelligent   misunderstanding    often   does.      So   it    is   that 

Mr.  Hardy  is  somewhat  of  an  isolated  artist ;  he  demands 

to  be  read  with  faith,  with  a  certain  tacit  acceptance  at 

the   first.     He   is   not   versatile,   fluent,   a   man   of  quick 

changes  and  surprises.     He  abides  in  art,  in  the  "  splendid 

isolation  "  of  his  native  Wessex :  that  corner  of  the  earth 

ridet  illi prcztej-  omnes,  and  it  is  not  equally  near,  dear,  and 

intelligible  to  all.     His  books  have  a  certain  strangeness 

to  many  minds,  an  aloofness  and  peculiarity,  so  that  they 

are   suspected   of  caricature,  of  wilful   eccentricity :    they 

may  be  true  to  life,  but  it  is  to  an  unfamiliar  aspect  and 

sort  of  life.     The  portrayal  of  Portland  in  his  latest  book 

is   a  signal   instance  of  this :  he  gives  to  the  island,  or, 

rather,  discerns    in   it,  a  "humour"  of  its  very  own,   in 

Ben  Jonson's  sense  of  the  term;  it  is  too  fantastical,  say 

some  readers.     Mr.  Hardy  has  a  decided  preference  for 

Abana   and    Pharpar    above   the   general   Jordan   of    the 

average  novelist.     This  passionately  loving  knowledge  of 

certain  scenes,  ways,  and  people,  this  exclusive  intimacy, 

a  delight  in  their  results   to   some,  are  an  hindrance  to 

others;    such   loyalty   and   fidelity   make   large   demands. 

And  Mr.   Hardy's   local  patriotism  is  not  provincial,  no 


144  POST   LIMINIUM 

mere  matter  of  dialect  and  externality.  The  passions  in 
his  writings  are  "  of  the  centre,"  though  displayed  with 
those  shades  of  difference,  those  inevitable  nuances,  which 
separate  not  only  race  from  race,  but  shire  from  shire.  Any 
failure  to  feel  at  home  in  his  environment  implies  inability 
to  feel  the  power  of  his  art  at  all.  He  is  not  a  difficult,  an 
obscure,  writer  :  he  is  certainly  exacting. 

.  .  .  Charlotte  Bronte,  in  some  ways  among  the  wisest  of 
women,  wrote  to  an  Emersonian  friend  :  "  I  suppose  I  have 
something  harsher  in  my  nature  than  you  have,  something 
which  every  now  and  then  tells  me  dreary  secrets  about  my 
race,  and  I  cannot  believe  the  voice  of  the  Optimist,  charm 
he  never  so  wisely."  Though  Mr.  Hardy,  like  Mr.  Brown- 
ing, lays  it  down  that  his  poems  are  "  largely  dramatic  or 
personative  in  conception,  and  this  even  where  they  are  not 
obviously  so,"  yet  (as  in  all  such  cases  and  pleas),  the  poet's 
choice  of  imaginative  theme,  his  personal  interest  in  his 
impersonal  moods  and  characters,  cannot  but  largely  speak 
the  man.  In  his  poems  there  are  passion,  humour, 
wistfulness,  grimness,  tenderness,  but  never  joy,  the  radiant 
and  invincible  ;  Mr.  Hardy's  verse  is  not  on  speaking  terms 
with  that  of  his  colleagues  in  prose,  Mr.  Meredith  and  Mr. 
Stevenson,  children  of  the  sunlight.  This  verse  is  bitter- 
sweet at  best,  a  thing  of  poignancy  and  aching  and  endurance, 
relieved  with  laughter  not  of  the  jovial  kind ;  it  is  most 
modern  and  mediaeval.  Its  intensities  have  a  curious  value 
for  lovers  of  plain  speech  about  life,  even  though  its 
philosophy  seem  thwart  and  wrong.' 

If  but  some  vengeful  god  would  call  to  me 

From  up  the  sky,  and  laugh  :  "Thou  suffering  thing, 

Know  that  thy  sorrow  is  my  ecstasy, 

That  thy  love's  loss  is  my  hate's  profiting  !  " 

Then  would  I  bear,  and  clench  myself,  and  die, 

Steeled  by  the  sense  of  ire  unmerited  ; 

Half-eased,  too,  that  a  Powerfuller  than  I 

Had  willed  and  meted  me  the  tears  I  shed. 


-MR.    HARDY  S    LATER    PROSE    AND    VERSE  I43 

But  not  so.     How  arrives  it  joy  lies  slain, 
And  why  unblooms  the  best  hope  ever  sown  ? 
— Crass  Casualty  obstructs  the  sun  and  rain, 
And  dicing  Time  for  gladness  casts  a  moan.  .  ,  . 
These  purblind  Doomsters  had  as  readily  strown 
Blisses  about  my  pilgrimage  as  pain. 

The  spirit  of  this  sonnet  is  the  spirit  of  the  book  ;  and  is 
surely  something  more  than  what  Newman  calls  "  just  the 
impatient  sensitiveness  which  relieves  itself  by  a  definite 
delineation  of  what  is  so  hateful  to  it " ;  it  is  at  least  in 
illustrating  the  contrarieties,  cross  chances,  vexed  attitudes, 
marred  possibilities  of  existence,  that  Mr.  Hardy's  "  dramatic 
or  personative  "  poetic  art  is  most  easily  at  home.  A  drastic, 
emphatic,  fascinating  art !  Yet  the  reader  should  always 
keep  in  mind  one  little  poem,  "  The  Impercipient,"  which 
softens  and  sweetens  the  whole :  a  little  poem  which 
strangely  recalls  to  me  the  one  touching  thing  recorded  of 
Schopenhauer. 

Many  pieces,  as  the  sonnet  quoted,  are  contemplative, 
introspective,  philosophic,  rich  in  a  grave  feUcity  of  dolo- 
rous phrases  and  an  iron  music.  Others  are  novelist's  work 
in  verse  ;  and  some  of  these,  as  "  Her  Death,  and  After," 
with  its  subtlety  of  conception  and  situation,  had  been 
better  in  Mr.  Hardy's  prose  :  they  cry  out  to  be  cast  into 
short  stories  by  the  writer  of  IVessex  Tales.  But  many 
are  perfectly  successful  in  their  actual  form ;  Browning 
might  be  proud  of  "  The  Burghers;"  and  "  My  Cicely,"  both 
technically  and  imaginatively,  is  a  moving  masterpiece. 
"  Friends  Beyond,"  a  dialogue  d' outre  tombe,  is  equally 
haunting ;  the  old  Wessex  characters,  high  and  low,  speak  to 
us  from  the  deep  rest  of  Mellstock  Churchyard,  where  they 
lie  in  death's  liberty,  fraternity,  equality  of  sleep ;  speak  "  at 
mothy  curfew-tide "  of  labours  ended,  the  world  over  and 
done,  its  little  and  its  great  things  alike  become  vanity,  all 
thoughts  of  earth  lost  in  the  incurious  repose  of  death. 
This  poem,  impossible  to  mutilate  by  an  extract,  reaches  to 

L 


146  POST   LIMINIUM 

the  heart  with  its  music  of  mortality,  its  accents  of  homeliness 
coming  from  the  inscrutable  grave ;  it  is  Lucretius  talking 
Wessex  with  Old  Testament  solemnity.  .  .  .  But  it  is  not 
possible  to  classify  the  various  poems  with  any  definiteness ; 
all  abound  in  ''  criticism  of  life,"  and  death  makes  a  lean 
and  dusty  figure  in  the  most  of  them.  We  are  confronted 
with  the  perplexities  of  soul  incident  to  life  in  a  world 
"  where  Nature  such  dilemmas  could  devise " ;  we  are 
tangled  and  torn  in  the  thickets  of  life's  malign  contrivance, 
and  make  our  smiling,  sad  confessions  of  our  strange  self- 
hood. 

A  thought  too  strange  to  house  within  my  brain 
Haunting  its  outer  precincts  I  discern  ! 

Such  psychology  meets  us  here  not  seldom,  and  hiddenly 
permeates  even  the  odd  humours  of  such  pieces  as  "  The 
Slow  Nature."  Here  are  no  dreamy,  mild  solutions  ot 
dark  problems,  no  condescension  to  the  impulse  of  pitiful- 
ness,  no  mystical  refuges  and  resignations.  We  can  never 
know  how  much  of  the  tragedy  of  Lamb's  life  lay  in  his 
solitary  love,  which  finds  so  piercing  an  expression  in  his 
"  Dream  Children "  :  "We  are  not  of  Alice,  nor  of  thee, 
nor  are  we  children  at  all.  The  children  of  Alice  call 
Bartrum  father.  We  are  nothing  ;  less  than  nothing,  and 
dreams.  We  are  only  what  might  have  been.  .  .  ."  It  is 
gently  plangent  and  uncomplaining  and  resigned.  Now 
hear  this,  "  At  a  Bridal  "  :— 

When  you  paced  forth,  to  wait  maternity, 

A  dream  of  other  offspring  held  my  mind. 

Compounded  of  us  twain  as  love  designed  : 

Rare  forms,  that  corporate  now  will  never  be  ! 

Should  I,  too,  wed  as  slave  to  Mode's  decree, 

And  each  thus  found  apart,  of  false  desire, 

A  stolid  line,  whom  no  high  aims  will  fire 

As  had  fired  ours,  could  ever  have  mingled  we  ; 

And,  grieved  that  lives  so  matched  should  miscomjiose, 

Each  mourn  the  double  waste  ;  and  question  dare 


!\IR.  hardy's  later  PROSE  AND  VERSE       1 47 

To  the  Great  Dame  whence  incarnation  flows, 
Why  those  high-purposed  children  never  were  : 
What  will  she  answer  ?    That  she  does  not  care 
If  the  race  all  such  sovereign  types  unknows. 

To  some  such  drear  "  dysangel "  most  of  these  brooding, 
scrutinising  pages  turn  and  return  :  and  always  with  some 
concrete,  positive  instance  or  proof  from  the  dramatic 
facts  of  life.  But  not  all  the  ponderings,  as  of  Milton's 
fallen  angels,  upon  the  constitution  of  things,  upon  the 
sorrow  inherent  in  existence  and  the  mystery  compassing  it 
round  about,  can  take  from  life  its  impassioned  interest : 
that  interest  which  lives  and  moves  in  Mr.  Hardy's  novels, 
and  which  animates  his  arresting,  strenuous,  sometimes 
admirable  poems. 

...  In  confident  defiance  of  those  judges  who  find  in  Tess 
and  yude  Mr.  Hardy's  masterpieces,  by  reason  of  their 
dealings  with  social  ethics  in  a  "fearless"  and  latter-day 
manner,  we  would  assign  the  place  of  honour  to  T/te  Retii7-n 
of  the  Native,  and,  with  no  long  interval,  to  The  Wood- 
landers,  and  The  Mayor  of  Casicrhridge.  Life's  "large 
ironies  "  are  in  these,  its  heights  and  depths  of  sorrow,  joy, 
love,  hate ;  the  great  elemental  things  of  humanity,  which 
are  dateless  and  from  everlasting,  presented  with  a  noble 
largeness  of  handling,  and  set  to  superb  accompaniments 
of  inanimate  nature.  Or  rather,  in  these  books,  Mr. 
Hardy  almost  forces  our  belief  in  Spinoza's  doctrine : 
omnia,  guamvis  diversis  gradibus,  animata  sunt.  There  is 
here  no  easy  pantheism,  nor  Mr.  Ruskin's  "pathetic 
fallacy " :  nothing  but  imagination  glorifying  experience 
with  an  august  simplicity  of  expression ;  the  woods,  the 
winds,  the  stars  play  their  inevitable  parts,  but  without  the 
forced  unreality  of  personification.  Tragic  in  the  extreme, 
of  an  iron  sternness,  these  romances  have  a  splendour  of 
beauty  in  their  stories  of  endurance  and  profoundest 
sorrow :  stories  of  men  and  women  who,  "  being  wrought," 
were  like  Othello,  "  perplexed  in  the  extreme,"  and  bore, 


148  POST   LIMINIUM  • 

as  it  were,  the  whole  burden  of  the  world's  grief  upon  them. 
Rich,  shrewd,  racy  humour  encompasses  them  as  with  a 
grim,  wise  flow  of  commentary  :  pastoral  Wessex  has  its 
say  about  souls  who  are  suffering  the  sorrows  of  Orestes  or 
Antigone,  patriarchal  woes  and  trials  coeval  with  the  race 
of  man.  In  these  works  Mr.  Hardy  writes  an  English  of 
strength  and  purity,  with  an  almost  Latin  clearness  and 
weight  of  words,  avoiding  for  the  most  part  the  temptation 
to  be  too  curious  a  phraseologist,  which  has  sometimes 
proved  too  much  for  him. 

Next,  for  dignity  of  theme  might  come  A  Fair  of  Blue 
Eyes  and  Far  froju  the  Maddwg  Crowd ;  and  Under  the 
Greenwood  Tree,  that  lovable  and  laughing  book,  gives  us 
an  English  Arcady  with  just  a  spice  of  malice.  That  spice 
of  pleasant  malice  becomes  somewhat  unpleasant  in  certain 
other  stories ;  even  in  the  audacious  tragic-comedy  of  Two 
on  a  Tower  there  shows  itself  a  sort  of  elvish  enjoyment 
of  the  "little  ironies"  in  which  life  abounds.  A  curious 
concern  for  the  fantastic,  the  grotesque,  the  quaint,  marks 
Mr.  Hardy  strongly :  were  he  a  mediaeval  builder,  his 
cathedrals  would  display  the  richest  gargoyles  in  Christen- 
dom. Some  of  his  short  stories  are  eminently  successful 
in  a  kind  of  humorous  horror  or  odd  melancholy :  he  is 
sometimes  a  Janus,  with  the  face  of  Democritus  on  this 
side,  of  Heraclitus  on  that.  Had  he  not  been  an  original 
writer  he  might  have  been  an  admirable  teller  of  country- 
side legends  and  the  traditional  gossip  of  centuries.  But 
his  greater  work,  his  handling  of  high  things,  throws  these 
exercises  into  the  shade :  the  creator  of  Marty  South  and 
Winterborne,  of  Yeobright  and  his  mother,  of  Eustacia, 
of  Henchard,  moves  with  an  absolute  security  upon  the 
higher  plane  where  passions  clash  and  emotions  meet,  and 
spirits  are  finely  or  fiercely  touched. 

There  is  little  subtlety,  as  the  word  is  understood;  it 
were  difficult  to  name  a  novelist  less  like  Mr.  Henry  James 
than   is   Mr.    Hardy.     Nor   is   there   any  such  deliberate 


MR.    hardy's    later    PROSE   AND    VERSE  1 49 

intellectuality  as  is  the  strength  and  the  fatal  weakness  of 
George  Eliot.  Yet  Mr.  Hardy  excels  in  presenting  com- 
plexities of  character  and  situation,  as  also  in  disclosing  a 
philosophy  of  life.  But  they  are  complexities,  it  is  a 
philosophy,  presented  or  indicated  under  certain  conditions 
and  limitations,  most  definite,  yet  not  narrowing :  he  writes 
out  of  knowledge  and  contemplation  centred  upon  the 
scenes  and  figures  of  his  predilection,  not  upon  individua 
vaga.  Human  nature  and  the  rest  of  nature  are  his  themes, 
but  conditioned,  as  philosophers  say,  by  certain  specialities 
and  proprieties.  A  man's  or  woman's  love  or  jealousy  is 
everywhere  the  same  in  essence;  but  whereas,  in  many 
books,  we  could,  mutatis  inutandis,  transfer  the  scene  from 
London  to  Paris  without  essential  injury,  no  such  translation 
is  possible  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Hardy.  Clym  Yeobright's 
passions  and  emotions  might  as  well  exist  at  Hampstead  as 
upon  Egdon :  but  Egdon  is  not  Hampstead,  and  Egdon 
itself  is,  so  to  speak,  one  of  the  essential  characters  in  the 
tragic  play.  Marty  South's  dumb  love  might  be  that  of  a 
Lancashire  factory  girl;  but  what  of  the  Hintock  woods 
with  their  voices?  And  the  least  happy  of  Mr.  Hardy's 
creatures  are  those  who  are  least  racy  of  a  distinctive  soil, 
and  have,  in  various  degrees,  the  unmarking  mark  of  cos- 
mopolitanism. Many  writers  are  engaged  in  showing  us 
the  idiosyncrasies  of  their  parish  pumps,  and  the  last  refine- 
ments of  their  district  jargons ;  but  Mr.  Hardy,  skilled  as 
he  is  by  heart  in  all  the  ways  of  Wessex  (though  he  is, 
indeed,  as  Mr.  Kipling  sings,  "  Lord  of  the  Wessex  coasts 
and  all  the  lands  thereby  "),  eschews  triviality  in  detail,  and 
goes  straight  to  the  heart  of  his  matter,  transfusing  into  it 
but  the  spirit,  influence,  effect  of  life  lived  in  distinguish- 
ing circumstances.  His  work  cares  not  for  futilities  of 
parochialism,  but  for  "high  actions  and  high  passions" 
warring  in  "  a  little  room,"  but  with  no  littleness.  His 
best  books  are  solemnizing,  and  the  end  is  a  sense  of 
imperious  resignation  to  the  mysteries  that  beset  us.     Tess 


150  POST    LIMINIUM 

and  Judc  leave  us  quarrelling  either  with  the  universe  or 
with  Mr.  Hardy.  The  earlier  great  books,  though  in  them 
Mr.  Hardy  is  at  no  pains  to  conciliate  conventions  of 
thought,  leave  us,  as  art  ought  to  leave  us,  tranquil  as  at 
the  close  of  Greek  tragedy.  When  "  the  act  and  agony  of 
tears  "  are  overpast,  we  feel,  with  Pascal,  that  man  is  great 
because  of  all  things  in  nature  he  alone  knows  his  misery, 
and  can  feel  a  solemn  triumph  in  the  knowledge.  Mr. 
Hardy's  art  at  its  loftiest  has  the  severe  beauty  of  a  starry 
night,  the  sole  thing  coupled  by  Kant,  for  sublimity  of 
solemnity,  with  "  the  moral  law." 


CHARLES  STEWART  PARNELL 

\The  Academy^  November  19,  1898.] 
One  epithet  occurs  with  impressive  iteration  in  Mr.  O'Brien's 
quietly  enthusiastic  Life  of  Parnell : '  "  kingly."  Parnell 
was,  still  is,  "  The  Chief,"  by  right  divine  of  the  genius  that 
rules  and  leads.  Like  Cromwell,  like  Napoleon,  he  headed 
his  people  less  as  a  popular  tribune  than  as  a  popular 
tyrant ;  towards  mob  and  multitude,  as  mob  and  multitude, 
he  felt  the  indifference  of  Coriolanus,  the  impatience  of 
self-conscious  intellect.  O'Connell,  the  one  Irishman  of 
the  century  comparable  with  him  in  effectiveness,  loved  the 
very  physical  contact  with  crowds,  whom  his  voice  swayed 
irresistibly.  Parnell,  even  at  his  fiercest,  and  when  his 
audience  was  friendliest,  was  alone  and  aloof,  doing  his 
duty  and  hating  it.  O'Connell  was  profuse  of  his  own 
personality,  and  took  life  with  an  exuberant  enjoyment, 
carrying  himself  as  though  every  Irishman  were  his  friend 
and  kinsman.  Many  an  Irishman  will  speak  of  his  two  or 
three  words  with  Parnell  as  though  he  were  a  devout  Catholic 
teUing  of  an  audience  with  the  Pope,  an  honour  that  may 

'  The  Life  0/  Charles  Steiuart  Parnell  (1846-1891).     By  R.  Barry 
O'Brien.     (Smith,  Elder  &  Co.)  1898. 


CHARLES   STEWART   PARNELL  15I 

come  but  once  in  a  lifetime.  Trusted  colleagues,  valued 
allies,  respected  advisers,  tolerated  assistants,  Parnell  had ; 
but  among  the  whole  Irish  race  they  were  few  indeed  who, 
without  shrewd  misgivings,  could  call  themselves  his  friends. 
Secretum  7neum  inihi  he  seems  always  to  have  said  ;  and  he 
declined  to  wear  either  his  heart  or  his  brain  upon  his 
sleeve.  He  was  "the  strong  still  man"  in  not  "  a  blatant," 
but  a  most  loquacious,  land  ;  and  his  countrymen  looked 
for  more  fruit  from  his  silences  than  from  the  eloquence  of 
others.  To  his  own  people  he  was  the  Man  of  Destiny, 
and,  as  a  consequence,  in  great  measure  a  Man  of  Mystery; 
but  they  knew  that  Ireland  filled  his  life,  that  his  will  was 
of  adamant,  that  England  feared  him,  and  that  he  cared 
absolutely  nothing  for  England.  Ireland  found  in  such  a 
man  an  acceptable  tyrant,  worthy  of  obedience  and  of 
confidence  ;  and  she  found  in  him  a  new  man.  A  Protestant 
landlord  of  a  family  not  long,  as  Irishmen  estimate  such 
matters,  settled  in  Ireland,  and  though  of  honourable  repute, 
by  no  means  ''  an  household  word "  with  Nationalists ; 
without  the  agile  or  fervent  imaginativeness  of  Irish  orators, 
without  historical  lore  or  poetical  sympathy ;  an  Irishman 
who,  to  his  last  days,  was  constantly  described  by  English- 
men as  English  in  ways  and  manners,  the  young  member 
for  royal  Meath  in  ;  1875  hardly  seemed  the  man  to  capture 
and  to  captain  the  national  cause,  to  bring  Ireland  within 
sight  of  self-government,  and  in  less  than  twenty  years  to 
pass  to  his  grave  amid  the  awful,  wrathful,  and  despairing 
sorrow  of  his  country.  Even  less,  perhaps,  did  his  country- 
men foresee  that  the  taciturn  young  man  destined  to  bring 
Ireland  so  close  to  the  goal,  was  also  destined, — in  part  by 
his  own  fault,  immeasurably  more  by  the  fault  of  others, — ■ 
to  make  the  goal  unattainable,  it  may  be,  for  generations. 
Qtwd  Dens  avcrtat. 

When  Benvenuto  Cellini  had  murdered  a  man,  and  Pope 
Paul  III.  was  preparing  to  condone  the  peccadillo,  one  of 
his  officials  remonstrated.     Said  his  Holiness  :  "  You  don't 


152  POST    LIMINIUM 

understand  these  things  so  well  as  I.  Know  that  men  like 
Benvenuto,  unique  in  their  profession,  stand  above  the  law." 
A  thoroughly  Renaissance  sentiment ;  yet,  in  a  sense,  not 
so  entirely  antinomian  as  it  sounds.  Assuredly  Parnell  was 
a  jNIachiavellian,  because  Machiavellian  tactics,  in  a  national 
cause,  seemed  to  him  necessary  and  "  common-sensible  "  : 
what  Thomas  Davis  or  John  Martin  would  have  rather  died 
than  done,  was  sometimes  to  Parnell  part  of  the  disagreeable, 
but  inevitable,  political  order  of  the  day.  Among  his  deepest 
convictions  lay  his  settled,  untheatrical,  essential  conviction 
that  England,  being  "  the  enemy,"  should  be  treated  as 
such ;  that  to  the  House  of  Commons,  in  which  he  sat  as, 
in  Attic  phrase, "  a  resident  alien,"  explanations,  self-defences, 
regrets,  apologies,  could  never  be  due  from  an  Irishman ; 
that  his  duty  was  to  ignore  even  what  some  Irishmen 
might  think  the  legitimate  demands  of  the  House  upon 
one  who  belonged  to  it  by  his  own  choice  and  upon  no 
compulsion.  But  Parnell  sat  at  Westminster,  from  first  to 
last,  as  a  foreigner  ;  it  had  no  charm  for  him,  no  fascination, 
merely  the  interest  of  being  the  place  where  he  could  be 
most  serviceable  to  Ireland,  'because  most  irritating  to 
England.  The  British  Parliament  was  his  strategic  field. 
The  strangest,  the  most  romantic  figure  in  that  assembly,  he 
was  there  in  superb  isolation,  directing  his  followers,  but  by 
the  force  of  an  iron  will,  not  of  intimacy  and  affection  :  the 
"  uncrowned  king "  cared  nothing  for  popularity,  even 
among  his  immediate  courtiers  and  officials.  Mr.  Stevenson 
wrote  of  him  upon  a  great  occasion  :  "  Honour,  in  this  case, 
is  due  to  Mr.  Parnell :  he  sits  before  posterity  silent,  Mr. 
Forster's  appeal  echoing  down  the  ages."  Yes ;  silent  to 
England  and  to  English  posterity,  but  in  a  silence  most 
eloquent  to  Ireland  :  the  silence  of  one  to  whom  the  opinion 
of  England  was  irrelevant  and  valueless,  of  one  to  whom 
English  execration  or  misunderstanding  was  as  nothing, 
compared  with  the  opportunity  of  showing  Irish  enmity 
and  independence.     He  would  negotiate  with  Tory  or  with 


CHARLES   STEWART    PARNELL 


OJ 


Whig,  accept  measures  from  this  government  or  from  that, 
precisely  as  his  poUtical  genius  discerned  it  best ;  but  he 
would  never  be  fettered  by  the  bonds  of  an  alliance.  He 
dealt  with  British  parties  as  he  dealt  with  the  Clan-na-Gael, 
honourably,  yet  with  all  manner  of  cunning  and  dexterity, 
of  d\p\oma.tic ^nesse.  There  was  no  waste  in  the  man  :  his 
speech,  his  silence,  his  activity,  his  inaction,  were  calculated 
and  full  of  purpose  :  they  were  all  part  and  parcel  of  his 
one  inveterate  aim  to  serve  and  save  Ireland  at  any  cost  or 
risk  to  himself^  but  to  do  so  in  his  own  convinced  and 
determined  way.  Like  Stafford,  he  was  thorough  ;  like  Pius 
IX,,  he  knew  the  power  of  a  brief  non  possujnus. 

Underneath  his  personal  and  intellectual  hauteur^  his 
nature  concealed  strange  elements :  the  least  modern  and 
"  advanced  "  of  Connemara  peasants  was  not  more  sincerely 
and  passionately  superstitious,  more  profoundly  fatalistic. 
The  master  of  tactics,  the  man  of  intuitive  decision,  of  a 
mind  rather  scientific  than  imaginative,  kept  a  watch  for 
omens  and  portents  and  presages,  no  less  keenly  than  for 
political  signs  and  indications  of  the  times.  Probably  no 
one  ever  knew  all  that  was  in  his  unique  nature  :  his,  as 
an  Irish  writer  has  said,  was  an  "  ice-clear,  ice-cold  in- 
tellect, working  as  if  in  the  midst  of  fire."  The  tragedy 
of  passion  which  proved  his  fall,  served  but  to  intensify  in 
men's  eyes  the  intensity  of  his  resolute  temperament :  the 
fight  of  his  last  days  showed  the  depths  of  his  nature  break- 
ing forth  and  surging  up  in  a  storm  of  fierce  emotions. 
"  Once  again/'  he  cried  to  a  gathering  of  his  countrymen, 
"  once  again  I  am  come  to  cast  myself  into  the  deep  sea  of 
the  love  of  my  people."  What  miracles  and  marvels  of 
self-repression  must  have  been  his,  who,  with  this  fire  of 
feeling  in  him,  was  so  long  its  master,  that  the  world 
thought  him  austerely  cold  and  hardly  human  !  The  stern 
brevity  and  directness  of  his  speech  became  glowing  and 
winged  with  "  the  love  of  love,  the  hate  of  hate,  the  scorn 
of  scorn  "  :  he  spoke  and  worked  with  "  thunders  of  thought 


154  POST   LIMINIUM 

and  flames  of  fierce  desire,"  and  yet  did  not  suffer  himself 
to  be  carried  away  even  by  the  strained  passion  of  the 
moment.  And  the  bitterness  of  the  pang  was  terrible. 
That  "  hypocritical "  England  should  howl  at  "  immoraUty  " 
was  but  natural  in  his  eyes ;  that  Ireland,  of  her  own  free 
will,  should  cast  him  off  would  have  seemed  but  justifiable, 
however  painful.  But  that  Ireland  should  do  so  at  England's 
bidding  was  the  great  betrayal,  the  national  humiliation,  the 
disastrous  disgrace ;  and  that  the  leaders  in  the  shame 
should  be  his  own  creatures,  and  all,  doubtless,  "  honour- 
able men."  So,  if  he  fought  for  himself,  it  was  not  for  love 
of  power  in  itself,  but  for  the  work  and  achievement  of  his 
manhood,  lest  it  be  utterly  undone,  and  Ireland  enter  upon  a 
new  period  of  sordid  wranglings  and  patriotic  impotence. 
Ireland  had  "the  Man,"  who  could  bring  round  "the 
Hour."  Parnell  felt  the  hideous  irony  of  fate  which 
destroyed  the  first  in  the  name  of  the  second. 

Mr.  O'Brien,  with  masterly  skill  in  the  choice  and  dis- 
position of  his  material,  has  presented  to  us  a  living  man, 
intelligible  and  credible,  without  in  any  degree  lessening 
our  sense  of  his  wonderfulness  and  most  rare  individuality. 
He  has  portrayed  him  with  all  those  Hmitations,  moral  and 
intellectual,  which  seem  necessary  to  the  making  and 
moulding  of  a  certain  order  of  greatness.  A  small  man  has 
gone  down  to  history  as  "  single-speech  Hamilton  " ;  this 
great  man  might  be  known  as  "  single-will  Parnell."  The 
thought  of  Ireland  seized  him  in  late  youth  or  early  man- 
hood, and  the  thought  fell  upon  almost  virgin  soil :  no 
legacies  of  ancestral  suffering,  no  memories  of  martyred  or 
exiled  forefathers,  no  exigencies  of  social  or  religious 
position,  brought  home  to  him  the  national  cause  and 
claim.  But  when  they  came,  they  came  home  indeed ; 
they  came  to  a  will,  a  mind,  an  heart,  incapable  of  vacilla- 
tion, forgetfulness,  or  fear.  They  came  to  one  in  whom 
fixity  of  purpose  was  combined  with  endless  adaptability  of 
means  to  ends :  to  one  who,  if  not  always  and  essentially 


PASCAL  155 

iustus^  was  magnificently /r<7/^j/Vi  tciiax.  These  pages  are, 
as  it  were,  a  glorification  of  will ;  we  might  almost  say  that 
Parnell  irresistibly  predestined  his  own  free-will,  and  went 
forward  by  inevitable  compulsion  of  his  own  creating.  By 
the  side  of  most  Irishmen,  in  whom  versatility  is  a  charm 
and  instability  a  danger,  he  appears  the  incarnation  of 
set  and  sworn  endeavour.  Others,  and  better  men  than 
he,  have  hoped  and  longed  to  redeem  their  country;  this 
man,  with  all  his  subtleties  and  wiles,  knew,  had  the  child- 
like simplicity  of  feeling  surc^  that  he  could  do  it.  He  did 
not  do  it;  but  if  it  can  be  done  in  his  way,  he  must  come 
again  to  do  it. 

PASCAL 

\Thc  Academy,  January  30,  1897,] 

Pascal,  says  Sainte-Beuve,  "  is  at  the  heart  of  Christianity 
itself" :  Pascal,  says  Hume,  is  a  Christian  Diogenes,  the 
great  example  of  artificial  life.  Assuredly,  he  is  nothing 
by  halves,  be  it  worldling  or  convert,  sceptic  or  believer, 
physicist  or  Jansenist.  Pascal  "the  stern  and  sick,"  as 
Goethe  calls  him,  was  not  made  for  golden  mediocrities, 
but  for  passions  and  ardours  in  their  fullest  vehemence. 
His  sister  and  biographer  notes  well  his  humeiir  bouillante. 
Of  most  men  in  notable  extremes  it  is  commonly  not  hard 
to  give  an  exact  account,  but  Pascal  must  always  abide  in 
a  twilight.  For  though  Port-Royal  be  intimately  known  to 
us  through  countless  sources,  and  though  portions  of  Pascal's 
life  be  plain  enough,  yet  the  work  from  which  we  try  to 
fashion  the  true  image  of  his  soul,  remains  a  thing  of  shreds 
and  patches.  .  .  .  Pascal  in  his  loneliness,  agony,  ardour, 
records  the  cries  of  his  heart,  the  subtleties  of  his  brain, 
with  painful  haste  and  zeal,  sometimes  with  an  incoherence 
not  wholly  sane.  St.  Augustine  and  Rousseau  leave  us 
their  Cojifessions  in  perfect  form  :  the  passion  is  in  orderly 
display.     But  Pascal's  thoughts  are  like  snatches  of  sudden 


156  POST    LIMINIUM 

prayer,  like  a  dream's  broken  talk,  like  Hamlet's  soliloquies, 
interspersed  with  wide  passages  of  methodical  reasoning. 

His  scientific  glory  crowned  him  upon  the  summit  of  the 
Puy  de  Dome,  the  scene  of  his  experiments  in  atmospheric 
pressure :  fame  was  there,  pride  and  ambition,  in  the  free, 
exhilarating  air.     But  when  he  wrote  the  Fensees  he  saw 
ever  beside  him  a  deep  pit  opening  its  unfathomed  glooms 
and  fears  :   an  hallucination,  doubtless,  bred  of  his  miracu- 
lous escape  (as  he  held  it  to  be),  from  the  accident  at  the 
Pont  de  Neuilly ;  but  the  delusion  had  its  intensity  of  true 
meaning.    Jansenism,  that  sombre  and  harsh  way  of  thought, 
a  would-be  Catholic  Calvinism  or  Montanism,  warped  and 
darkened   the  world   to  his  eyes.      Yet,  Jansenism  apart, 
Pascal  was  one  of  those  Christians  who  have  no  possibility 
of  being  happy,  except  through  the  joy  of  sorrow  and  the 
delight  of  abnegation.     To  Theophile  Gautier  Christianity 
was  odious,  as  the  cause  of  melancholy,  mysticism,  and 
self-denial,    because   it   humiliated   the   natural   man,  and 
poisoned  pleasure,  and  induced  an  infinite  longing.     Those 
were  its  glories  and  charms  for  Pascal,  who  came  perilously 
near  to  voluptuousness  in  the  rapture  of  self-torture,  the 
ecstasies  of  asceticism.     One  Good  Friday,  Dr.  Johnson, 
not  to  be  interrupted  in  his  devotions  by  Boswell,  gave  him 
the  Pensks.     That  dear  and  ridiculous  gentleman  found  in 
them  "  a  truly  divine  unction."     But  unction  is   not  the 
word ;  Fe'nelon,  Francis  of  Sales,  have  unction ;  Pascal  has 
a  prostrate  self-abasement  magnificently  complete,  in  which 
"  imbecile  nature  "  is  bidden  to  keep  silence,  and  "  impotent 
reason  "  to  humble  itself.     All  of  which  is  simple,  logical, 
orthodox  Christianity  :  the  necessary  attitude  of  man  in  the 
presence  of  the  ultimate  mysteries,  in  the  ante-chamber  of 
realities.     But  Pascal,  brooding  over  his  Detis  absco?idiius, 
cannot  conclude  with  a  complacent  expression  of  man's 
limited  faculties,  and  a  few  pious  words  about  doing  our 
best   with   what   light  we    have.     He  waxes  exultant  and 
sonorous,  terrible  and  savage,  lyrical  and  mournful,  as  he 


PASCAL  157 

dwells  upon  the  estate  of  "man  the  admirable,  the  pitiable." 
But  never  a  word  of  whining  pessimism,  petulant  reproach  : 
only  a  splendid  self-contempt,  a  scourging  of  the  "  hateful 
/."  Nothing,  says  St.  Ambrose,  is  loftier  than  humiHty, 
which  cannot  be  exalted,  being  the  superior  state;  and 
Pascal's  self-abjection  is  his  tribute  to  man's  marred  great- 
ness and  high  destiny.  The  Pensees  keep  up  a  perpetual 
harping  upon  the  greatness  and  littleness  of  man,  as  revealed 
in  their  greatness  by  Christianity.  "  His  very  infirmities 
prove  man's  greatness :  they  are  the  infirmities  of  a  great 
lord,  of  a  discrowned  king."  Upon  every  page  we  think 
of  Pascal  as  a  baptized  Lucretius,  whose  rolling  thunders 
and  swift  lightnings  come  from  Sinai  and  Calvary :  he  is 
one  of  the  elect  sad  souls  whose  profound  severity  is 
heartening. 

We  cannot  judge  of  what  value  would  have  been  his 
Defence  of  Christianity,  for  which  most  of  the  Pensees 
are  suggestions  and  notes  j  probably,  it  would  have  been 
the  supreme  masterpiece  of  French  prose,  if  not  of  all 
modern  prose,  but  unconvincing  to  the  unbelieving,  and 
perilous  to  the  faithful.  Pyrrhonism,  in  Pascal's  sense  a 
kind  of  Christian  Agnosticism,  is  a  philosophic  necessary  of 
life;  but  Pascal  was  no  metaphysician  or  theologian,  and 
his  reasoned  treatise  would  assuredly  have  crossed  forbidden 
boundaries.  Like  his  favourite  Montaigne,  he  had  no 
method  in  the  observation  of  life ;  his  proficiency  in  mathe- 
matics, that  precise  study,  led  him  to  distrust  and  to  decry 
less  narrowly  exacting  principles  of  thought.  ^^  II  f ant  avoir 
ces  trois  qtialites :  pyrrhonien,  geometre,  chretien  S07imisJ' 
There  is  no  heresy  in  that,  but  it  does  not  augur  well  for  a 
work  of  professed  apologetics.  Not  his  reasoning,  but  his 
temperament,  not  his  arguments,  but  his  ideas  are  what 
enrich  the  Pensees,  making  them  one  of  the  world's  great 
books.  Those  to  whom  the  Olympian  serenity  of  Goethe, 
his  "classic  equability,"  seems  an  intolerable  imposture, 
take  instinctively  to  Pascal :  he  humbles  them  and  exalts, 


15S  POST   LIMINIUM 

inspires  and  saddens;  his  irony  scathes,  his  compassion 
salves.  His  '■'■profoyideiir  de  tristessc  et  d'eloqueiice"  to 
use  Villemain's  phrase,  sends  forth  doctrines  more  com- 
manding and  more  possible  than  exhortations  to  live  in 
"  the  Whole,  the  Good,  the  Beautiful "  :  the  straitest  sect 
of  the  Manichees  seems  more  plausible  than  that.  "La 
maladie  est  I'e/ai  naturel  des  Chretiens"  jis  Pascal's  teach- 
ing ;  and,  really,  we  have  read  much  of  the  same  sort  in 
the  Gospels  !  It  is  for  insisting  upon  this  side  of  Chris- 
tianity that  Mr.  Cotter  Morison,  a  strenuous  anti-Christian, 
calls  Catholicism  "  more  Scriptural "  than  Protestantism. 
Not  that  a  Christian  life,  says  Pascal,  is  "  une  vie  de  iris- 
tesse"  ;  but  because  Christian  sorrow  is  more  delightful  than 
all  worldly  joy.  Pascal,  author  of  the  Provincial  Letters, 
was  no  dusky,  dreary  penitent,  soured  and  selfish ;  he  had 
been  an  accomplished  man  of  this  world,  and  he  became 
an  accomplished  man  of  the  next,  whose  "  conversation  in 
heaven "  had  its  gracious  dignities.  "  Oh,  what  a  noble 
mind  is  here  o'erthrown ! "  has  been  quoted  of  Pascal. 
"  Society  "  in  Jerusalem  may  have  said  the  same  of  Paul, 
after  that  deplorable  delusion  upon  the  way  to  Damascus. 
Passion,  indeed,  is  the  note  of  the  Pensees,  an  intense, 
devouring  energy  of  soul  and  spirit ;  but  there  is  no  sign  of 
any  mental  degradation.  His  bodily  pains  were  not  those 
of  the  crazed  fanatic;  his  style'is  still  trenchant  and  pure : 
even  what  seem  to  be  lapses  from  perfect  sanity  may  very 
well  be  but  the  hasty  phrases  of  a  man  in  pain,  jotting 
down  rough  notes,  single  words,  mere  indications  of  a 
meaning  intelligible  to  himself.  The  world  has  not  for- 
given its  deserter.  What  the  world  would  pardon  in  an 
illiterate  friar  it  does  not  pardon  in  Pascal  the  scientific  and 
polite.  With  Bayle,  it  calls  him  a  "  paradox  of  the  human 
race."  Volumes  have  been  written  to  prove  that  he  was, 
and  was  not.  Catholic,  Protestant,  sceptic,  believer :  his 
brain  and  his  MSS.  have  been  examined  and  forced  to 
yield    evidence.      Verily,  it   is    dangerous    to    be   a   very 


PASCAL  159 

passionate  Christian,  trampling  on  the  world's  pride — with  a 
greater.  "  Mediocrity  alone  is  good  ! "  says  Pascal  in  his 
contempt. 

"The  heart  has  its  reasons  unknown  to  reason"  is  one 
of  his  familiar,  famous  sayings ;  his  finer  Pens'ees  are  of  that 
intimate  kind.     True,  he  argues  much,  even  to  the  verge 
of  naked  cynicism,  about  the  "chances"  of  religion  being 
true:  the  celebrated  argument  of  the  wager.     But  he  speaks 
far  more  of  Christianity  as  in  itself  desirable  and  delightful, 
as  ennobling  and  dignifying  its  receiver.     We  fight  inch  by 
inch  against  conviction  if  told  that  a  friend  has  played  us 
false;  but  we  have  an  immediate  longing  to  believe  the 
truth  of  some  honourable  report.     Pascal  falls  in  Platonic 
love  (to  use  the  term  correctly  for  once)  with  Christianity ; 
he  cannot  do  otherwise.    "  Who  can  withhold  credence  and 
adoration  from  so  divine  a  light  ? "     And  it  was  for  the 
honour,  as  he  held,  of  Christianity  in  its  pure  grandeur  that 
he  fought  his  jealous  fight  with  the  Jesuit  casuistry  and  for 
the  Jansenist  heresy,  and  became  more  casuistical  than  any 
Jesuit  in  the  process.     He  was  untainted  by  the  sometimes 
worldly  motives  which  were  mixed  with  the  acts  of  Port- 
Royal  ;  his  pride  and  scorn  and  stubbornness  were  for  the 
sake  of  a  Christianity  about,  as  he  thought,  to  be  watered 
down,  and  made  cheap,  and   given   over  to  "  the  crowd, 
incapable  of  perfectness."     He  lacked  that  mark  of  the 
saints,  pitilessness  for   himself,   but  boundless  charity  for 
others;  his  Puritanism  was  averse  from  all   softness  and 
indulgence  towards  the  world  in  little  things,  that  it  might 
be  won  to  the  greater  things.     In  that  he  was  absolutely 
outside  the  whole  tradition  of  the  historical  Church,  and 
allied  with  a  goodly  number  of  heretics,  perfectionists  of 
many  kinds,  who  have  sought  to  lay  burdens  not  to  be 
borne   on  the   multitude.     He   professes  a  full  and   firm 
obedience  to  the  divine  authority  of  Rome ;  and  yet :  "  If 
my  Letters  are  condemned  in  Rome,  still  what  /  condemn 
in  my  Letters  is  condemned  in  Heaven ! "     It  smacks  of 


l6o  POST   LliMINIUM 

Lucifer  and  Luther ;  there  is  some  "  hateful  /"  about  that. 
The  fervent  passion  of  the  man,  jealous  for  the  cause  he 
believes  divine,  drives  him  into  inconsistency ;  he  was  not, 
indeed,  a  Lamennais,  but  much  of  a  Savonarola  or  a  Sarpi, 
in  fighting  for  his  convictions  against  his  superiors.  Reasons 
of  the  heart  account  for  the  worst  in  him,  as  for  the  best : 
he  would  hardly  have  been  pleased  to  learn  that  Gibbon 
read  the  Provincial  Letters  once  a  year  as  a  model  of 
theological  argument.  Not  the  controversies  of  his  day, 
but  his  thoughts  on  eternal  things  preserve  his  glory.  Like 
Wordsworth,  but  with  a  more  personal  and  fiery  passion, 
he  contemplates  the  tragedy  of  life,  its  "  fierce  confederate 
storm  "  of  sorrows,  its  heights  and  deeps,  turning  the  light 
of  a  restless  imagination  upon  the  secular  scene,  and  noting 
the  poignancies  of  the  play.  He  has  made  his  "  rcno7iciation 
totale  et  doucc^'  but  the  burning  renunciant  sends  his 
thoughts  far  over  the  world  and  its  history,  appraising  the 
value  of  things,  letting  escape  him  no  trace  of  man's  de- 
gradation or  man's  grandeur,  eager  to  show  what  Christianity 
can  do  for  both.  A  lover  of  superiorities,  he  has  pity  for 
their  opposites,  but  mere  contempt  for  the  meagre  and  the 
middling ;  he  is  capable  of  making  submission  to  evil,  but 
not  a  compromise,  and,  if  the  heights  of  sanctity  be  un- 
attainable, he  will  still  attempt  them.  France  has  no 
writer,  certainly  no  lay  writer,  who  resembles  him  in  his 
superb  austerity  :  "  on  inourra  scul"  he  said,  and  in  truth  he 
both  was  and  is  a  man  of  isolation,  dwelling  apart.  "  Pensec 
fait  la  grandeur  de  r/iojnme"  :  profoundly,  absolutely,  is 
that  true  of  Pascal.  He  is  no  phrasemonger,  witty,  light, 
clever;  "an  epigrammatist — a  bad  man,"  is  one  of  his 
rough  jottings.  Nor  is  he  the  elegant  and  querulous  keeper 
of  a  sentimental  journal.  He  is  one  of  the  voices  which  at 
rare  intervals  come  from  the  heart  of  a  man,  and  go  to  the 
hearts  of  men  :  cor  ad  cor  loquitur,  and  deep  answers  deep. 


ERASMUS,    JIY   DARLING  l6l 


ERASMUS,  MY   DARLING 

[The  Daily  Chronicky  March  15,  1902,] 
Sir  Thomas  More,  heart-friend  and  close  colleague  of 
Erasmus  in  his  fight  against  human  folly,  against  obstinate 
obscurantism  and  rash  reform,  wrote  thus  in  his  "  Confuta- 
tion "  of  Tyndale  :  all  More's  winning  sweetness  is  fragrant 
in  the  words  : — 

"  He  asketh  me  why  I  have  not  contended  with  Erasmus  whom  he 
calleth  my  darling,  of  all  his  long  while,  for  translating  this  word 
ecclesia  into  this  word  congregatio.  And  then  he  cometh  forth  with 
his  fit  proper  taunt  that  I  favour  him  of  likelihood  for  making  of  his 
book  Moria  in  my  house.  There  had  he  hit  me,  save  for  lack  of  a  little 
salt.  I  have  not  contended  with  Erasmus,  my  darling,  because  I  find 
no  such  malicious  intent  and  purpose  that  I  find  with  Tyndale.  For 
had  I  found  with  Erasmus,  my  darling,  the  shrewd  intent  and  purpose 
that  I  find  with  Tyndale,  Erasmus,  my  darling,  should  be  no  more  my 
darling.  But  I  find  in  Erasmus,  my  darling,  that  he  detesteth  and 
abhorreth  the  errors  and  heresies  that  Tyndale  plainly  teacheth  and 
abideth  by  ;  and  therefore  Erasmus,  my  darling,  shall  be  my  dear 
darling  still." 

Probably  most  of  those  whose  libraries  contain  works 
little  more  beloved  than  the  nine  Leyden  folios  of  Erasmus, 
also  come  to  look  upon  him  as  their  "darling,"  as  an 
intimate  and  dear  friend,  gravely  smiling  out  of  the  past, 
yet  present  and  modern ;  but  there  is,  of  course,  also  the 
pure  scholar's  attitude  towards  a  chief  pioneer  in  scholar- 
ship. Gibbon,  who  understood  esteem  but  not  love,  perhaps 
did  not  feel  the  charm,  so  much  as  the  greatness,  of 
Erasmus.  Writing  of  Basle  he  says :  "  In  1459  the 
University  was  founded  by  Pope  Pius  11.^  who  had  been 
Secretary  to  the  Council.  But  what  is  a  Council  or  an 
University  to  the  presses  of  Froben  and  the  studies  of 
Erasmus?"  The  late  Dean  Church,  in  a  letter  about  Basle, 
curiously  and  unconsciously  reminiscent  of  Gibbon,  which 
we  quote  for  the  interest  of  its  last  sentence,  has  said  : — 

M 


I  62  POST    LIMINIUM 

"The  memory  of  tlie  Council  is  shadowy.  .  .  .  But  the  interest  of 
Basle  is  about  Erasmus,  and  his  printer  Froben,  and  his  painter 
Holbein,  and  his  friend  and  executor  Boniface  Amerbach,  the  collector 
of  all  the  Holbein  relics  which  enrich  the  museum,  and  his  just  rival 
yEcolanpadius,  the  Gwinglian  reformer.  ...  I  have  been  reading 
about  Erasmus  since,  and  with  great  interest.  He  is  a  man  whom  it  is 
impossible  to  admire  ;  and  yet,  in  such  a  time  of  turmoil,  violence,  and 
breaking-up  of  foundations,  one  cannot  but  have  sympathy  for  his 
perplexities,  and  wonder  for  his  bright  and  keen  intellect,  his 
indefatigable  laboriousness,  and  his  singular  good  sense.  But  he  was 
selfish,  insincere,  and  mean-spirited." 

It  is  rash  to  differ  from  so  delicate  a  judge  of  character, 
so  impartial  a  historian  and  critic,  as  was  the  late  Dean  of 
St.  Paul's  ;  and  yet  we  cannot  but  think  that  the  Dean,  had 
he  written  for  publication,  would  have  modified  that  judg- 
ment, so  intelligible,  yet  so  wounding  to  the  lovers  of 
Erasmus  by  its  touch  of  excess  in  a  half-truth.  Doubtless, 
Erasmus  was  a  man  of  less  noble  make  and  mould  than 
More  j  but  then  More  seems  to  us  a  man  with  the  finest 
spirit  of  a  Periclean  Greek  perfected  and  deepened  and 
enriched  by  the  consecration  of  Christianity.  Erasmus 
would  hardly  have  mounted  the  scaffold  to  martyrdom  on 
Tower  Hill,  as  did  his  indomitable  friend,  or,  if  he  had 
done  so,  it  would  hardly  have  been  in  the  brave  spirit  of 
him  whose  "  gay  genius  played,"  as  Wordsworth  has  it, 
"  With  the  inoffensive  sword  of  native  wit.  Than  the  bare 
axe  more  luminous  and  keen."  Erasmus  died  on  the  eve 
of  being  created  a  cardinal ;  but  no  one  has  ever  sug- 
gested that  he  had  in  him  the  marks  and  makings  of  a 
saint. 

He  had  something  in  common  with  Matthew  Arnold  :  a 
like  satiric,  yet  profoundly  felt,  impatience  with  intellectual 
pedantry  and  social  folly ;  a  like  consequent  air  of  almost 
irritating  superiority;  a  like  sort  of  consequent  isolation 
from  those  who  take  strong  definite  sides  and  can  comprehend 
no  middle  position.  Arnold  made  his  famous  triple  division 
of  the  British  people  into  Barbarians,  Philistines,  Populace 


ERASMUS,   MY   DARLING  163 

Erasmus,  as  Sir  Richard  Jebb  has  justly  observed,  ignored 
the  illiterate  altogether :  not,  we  think,  from  contempt,  or 
lack  of  kindliness  of  heart,  but  because  his  whole  mind  and 
its  concerns  were  so  entirely  engrossed  and  occupied  else- 
where. But  "  the  barbarians  "  is  a  constant  term  of  his ;  it 
answers  very  much  to  Arnold's  twofold  Barbarians  and 
Philistines.  He  was  no  sledge-hammer  controversialist ;  in 
an  age  of  extraordinary  vehemence  his  delicacy,  his  subtlety, 
were  bound  to  be  ineffective.  *'  I  do  not  agree,"  he  writes 
to  his  old  schoolfellow  Pope  Adrian,  "  with  Luther  on  a 
single  point  " ;  yet,  "  one  party  says  that  if  I  do  not  attack 
Luther,  it  is  a  sign  that  I  agree  with  him."  What  he  longed 
for,  laboured  for,  was  the  supremacy  of  reason,  just  judgment, 
the  trained  intellect  and  the  comprehensive  spirit :  he  found 
them  scarce  anywhere. 

Erasmus  was  all  for  reformation ;  he  detested  deforma- 
tion. To  fling  to  the  winds  the  heirlooms  and  rich  heritage 
of  the  past  because  of  its  rusty  incrustations  or  fungous 
excrescences,  was  to  him  an  intolerable  lunacy,  an  exasperat- 
ing frenzy,  of  devastation.  Spartam  nacius  es  :  hanc  exorna. 
Purify,  elevate,  restore,  but  do  not  destroy.  Mr.  Karl 
Pearson,  in  his  brilliant,  indignant  and  generally  true  essays 
upon  "  Humanism  in  Germany "  and  "  Martin  Luther," 
has  put  this  aspect  of  the  case  pithily  and  well.  "The 
leaders  of  the  Rational  Humanists  were  Reuchlin  and 
Erasmus.  Their  party  and  its  true  work  of  culture  were 
shipwrecked  by  the  Reformation  storm."  '^  The  Catholic 
Church  needed  reform  urgently  enough,  but  the  reform 
which  it  needed  was  that  of  Erasmus,  not  that  of  Luther." 
"  We  have  to  inquire  whether  our  modern  thought  has  not 
been  the  outcome  of  a  gradual  return  to  the  principles  of 
Erasmus :  a  continuous  rejection,  one  by  one,  of  every 
doctrine  and  every  conception  of  Luther."  Landor 
described  himself  as  "  radically  a  conservative  in  all  things 
useful."  Hawthorne,  as  in  old  echo,  declared  himself 
"radically  conservative";  Tennyson  said,  "I  am  a  liberal. 


1 64  POST   LIMINIUM 

and  would  conserve  the  hopes  of  man."    They  -belonged, 
then,  to  the  school  of  Erasmus. 

Happily, — for  polemics  are  almost  always  as  distressing 
as  they  are  fascinating, — his  Epistles  [made  English]  show 
us  Erasmus  in  the  first  half  of  his  career ;  Erasmus  the 
friend  of  scholars ;  moving  about  Europe  in  that  brother- 
hood of  scholarship  which  exists  no  longer,  now  that  Latin 
is  no  more  the  common  colloquial  tongue  and  instrument 
of  intercourse  of  gentlemen  and  scholars  among  all  nationsi 
nor  the  mastery  of  classic  learning  a  freemasonry  of  minds. 
The  Erasmus  of  the  letters  is  the  ardent  and  reverential 
champion  of  Cicero  and  Jerome;  the  impassioned  and 
indefatigable  student,  who  writes  to  a  friend  :  "  I  have  been 
applying  my  whole  mind  to  the  study  of  Greek ;  and  as 
soon  as  I  receive  any  money  I  shall  first  buy  Greek  authors, 
and  afterwards  some  clothes."  A  more  strenuous  apostle 
and  evangelist  and  pioneer  of  "  the  humanities  "  never  was : 
he  glows  with  enthusiasm  at  the  thought  of  scholarship  and 
scholars.  Here  is  a  passage  from  a  letter  to  an  English 
friend  in  Italy,  which  should  interest  English  readers  and 
fill  English  scholars  with  just  pride  : — 

"How  do  you  like  our  England,  you  will  say?  Believe  me,  my 
Robert,  when  I  answer  that  I  never  liked  anything  so  much  before.  I 
find  the  climate  both  pleasant  and  wholesome  ;  and  I  have  met  with  so 
much  kindness,  and  so  much  learning,  not  hackneyed  and  trivial,  but 
deep,  accurate,  ancient,  Latin  and  Greek,  that  but  for  the  pleasure  of 
seeing  it,  I  do  not  so  much  now  care  for  Italy.  When  I  hear  my  Colet, 
I  seem  to  be  listening  to  Plato  himself.  In  Grocin,  who  does  not 
marvel  at  such  a  perfect  round  of  learning  ?  What  can  be  more  acute, 
profound  and  delicate  than  the  judgment  of  Linacre?  What  has 
nature  ever  created  more  gentle,  more  sweet,  more  happy  than  the 
genuis  of  Thomas  More  ?  I  need  not  go  through  the  list.  It  is 
marvellous  how  abundant  is  the  harvest  of  ancient  learning  in  this 
country,  to  which  you  ought  all  the  sooner  to  return." 

Erasmus  was  an  aristocrat  of  letters,  loving  their  finer 
spirit,  feeling  an  impatient  irritation  at  the  thought  and  in 
the  presence  of  those  who  had  not  drunk  of  their  wisdom 


POETRY   AND   PATRIOTISM    IN    IRELAND  165 

and  undergone  their  discipline.  In  all  matters,  scholarly 
or  ecclesiastical,  his  attitude  towards  the  multitude  was : 
"  Lord  !  what  fools  these  mortals  be  ! "  He  had  not  the 
intensity  of  moral  wrath  wherewith  Lucretius  thundered  his 
Tantum  rdigio  potidt  suadere  malorum — Lucretius,  of  whom 
a  modern  scholar  has  said  that  of  all  the  ancients  he, 
Socrates  alone  excepted,  comes  nearest  to  the  type  of 
"  religious  reform."  There  was  nothing  in  Erasmus  of  all 
that  is  implicit  in  those  untranslatable  words  and  right 
Roman  virtues,  gravitas  and  auctoritas.  He  is  more  closely 
akin  to  Cicero  than  to  Caesar,  to  Rabelais  and  Montaigne 
than  to  Pascal  and  Spinoza.  He  felt  that  it  is  so  easy  to  be 
vehement  and  intense,  so  hard  to  be  gracious  and  urbane  ! 
It  was  very  hard  in  those  clashing  and  perplexing  days. 
Yet  he  was  no  trimmer :  like  Luther,  he  uttered  his  "  Ich 
kann  nich  anders"  though  of  a  subtler  sort.  "  Qui  salt" 
asks  Renan,  "  si  la  finesse  d'esprit  ?ie  consiste  pas  a  s'abstenir 
de  conclure  t " 


POETRY  AND  PATRIOTISM  IN  IRELAND 

[The  second  essay  in  a  book  published  by  subscription  called  Poetry 
and  h-eland :  Essays  by  W.  B.  Yeats  and  Lionel  Johnson  :  The  Cuala 
Press,  Churchtown,  Dundrum,  190S.  "Poetry  and  Patriotism"  had 
been  delivered  as  a  lecture  by  the  author  before  the  Irish  Literary 
Society,  in  London,  probably  in  or  about  the  year  1S94.  The  exact 
date  does  not  seem  to  be  discoverable.] 

It  appears  to  be  the  creed  of  some  critics,  that  in  the 
Irish  poetry  of  some  sixty,  fifty,  and  forty  years  ago,  in  the 
poetry  of  The  Nation  and  of  "  Young  Ireland,"  with  their 
immediate  predecessors  and  followers,  we  have  a  fixed  and 
unalterable  standard  whereby  to  judge  all  Irish  poetry,  past 
and  present  and  to  come.  In  the  poetry  of  that  great 
generation  lies  beauty,  all  beauty,  and  nothing  but  beauty  ! 
Against  any  living  Irish  poet  who  writes  in  any  style 
uncultivated  then,  is  brought  the  dreadful  charge  of  being 


1 66  POST   LIMINIUM 

artistic:  and  sometimes,  if  it  be  a  very  flagrant  case,  the 
unspeakable  accusation  of  being  English.  Now  I  heartily 
hate  the  cant  of  "Art  for  art's  sake:"  I  have  spent  years 
in  trying  to  understand  what  is  meant  by  that  imbecile 
phrase.  Also,  I  have  a  healthy  hatred  of  the  West  Briton 
heresy.  Further,  no  Irishman  living  has  a  greater  love,  and 
a  greater  admiration,  for  the  splendid  poetry  of  Davis^ 
INIangan,  and  their  fellows.  But  I  dislike  coercion  in 
literature :  and  it  seems  to  me  an  uncritical  dictation  of 
the  critics,  when  they  tell  a  writer  that  he  or  she  is  no  true 
Irish  poet,  because  he  or  she  does  not  write  rousing  ballads, 
or  half-humorous  love-songs,  or  rhetorical  laments,  or  a 
mixture  of  historical  and  political  verse ;  and  because  he  or 
she  takes  exceeding  pains  with  his  or  her  workmanship  and 
art.  An  attention  to  form  and  style  is  apparently  an  English 
vice  :  well !  certainly  it  is  an  English  thing,  just  as  it  was 
Greek  and  Roman,  yes  !  and  Irish  also,  once.  The  intricacy 
and  delicacy,  the  artfulness  and  elaboration,  of  Gaelic  and 
Cymric  verse,  are  unparalleled  in  European  literature  :  so 
minute,  so  detailed,  so  difficult  was  the  attention  paid  to 
the  technical  side  of  poetry,  that  Irish  and  Welsh  scholars 
of  unblemished  patriotism  have  deplored  it  as  fatal  to  the 
free  poetical  spirit.  There  is  not  a  critic  in  Europe  who  has 
written  upon  Celtic  literature  without  noting  the  singular 
charm,  the  curiosa  felicitas,  of  Celtic  style  :  we  all  know  the 
admiration  of  Renan  in  France,  of  Arnold  in  England,  for 
its  grace  and  beauty.  Music  and  poetry  were  held  by  our 
forefathers  in  an  almost  religious  veneration  :  the  poet 
passed  through  a  long  discipline  of  the  strictest  severity 
before  he  reached  the  high  dignities  of  his  profession.  There 
is  no  modern  cultivator  of  arduous  poetical  forms,  the 
ballade,  rondeau,  Villanelle,  triolet,  sonnet,  who  endures 
half  the  labour  that  was  demanded  by  the  ancient  laws  of 
Irish  and  Welsh  metre.  An  Irish  poet  of  to-day  may  lack 
a  thousand  Irish  virtues :  but  if  he  give  a  devoted  care  to 
the  perfecting  of  his  art,  he  will  have  at  least  one  Celtic 


POETRY   AND   PATRIOTISM   IN    IRELAND  167 

note,    one  characteristic   Irish  virtue.     While  he  is  intent 
upon  the  artful  turns  and  cadences  of  his  music  and  the 
delicate  choice  of  his  words,   striving  to  achieve  the  last 
graces  and  perfections  possible  to  his  work,  he  is  at  one  in 
spirit  with  the  poets  of  old  Ireland.     The  old  Irish  forms 
are  barely  possible  in  English  :  but  their  spirit  is  attainable. 
And  if  he  choose  to  take  the  more  subtle  and  ingenious  of 
English  forms,  he  may  do  so  without  the  crime  of  borrow- 
ing from  the  enemy  :    for  scarce  one  of  them  is  native  to 
England.      Considering  to  what  magnificent   uses    Rome 
turned  the  forms  and  metres  of  Greece,  and  England  those 
of  France   and   Italy,  without  ceasing  to  be  Roman  and 
English,  we  need  not  fear  lest  an  Irish  poet  should  cease 
to  be  Irish,  if  he  study  and  borrow  and  adapt  the  best 
achievements   of  foreign   art  to  the  service   of  the   Irish 
Muses.     But  Irish  poetry  to-day,  I  may  be  told,  should  be 
a  national  weapon :  we  want  to  reach  and  touch  the  hearts 
of  our  listeners,  to  fan  the  sacred  fire,  to  be  passionate 
and  burning  and   impetuous.     Why  trouble  about  minute 
proprieties  or  delicate  graces  of  art,  so  long  as  our  verse 
go  with  a   ring  and   a   swing,   celebrating   the   glories   of 
Ireland,  or  with  a  sigh  and  a  cry,  lamenting  her  griefs  ?     Is 
there  not  something  cold-blooded  and  slow-pulsed  in  writing 
without   vehemence   and  a    rush    of    sentiment  ?      Leave 
metre-mongering  to  the  young  decadents  and  esthetes  of 
Paris  and  London  :  and  let  Irish  verse  sweep  unfettered  as 
the  Irish  winds,  and  surge  free  as  the  Irish  seas,  and  satisfy 
the    Irish   people.     Well !    like  most   stump    oratory,  that 
is  very  high   and  mighty  and  impressive  :    but   it   is   not 
argument.     Passionate   impulse  and  patient  pains  are  not 
incompatible.     On  the  other  side,  there  is  sometimes  an 
equally   unreasoning   depreciation   of  anything  rhetorical, 
anything   spontaneous :    and  the  whole  battle,   the   whole 
confusion,  comes  of  ignoring  the  fact  that  there  are  many 
legitimate  kinds  of  poetry,  that  each  and  every  kind  has  a 
right  to  live,  and  that  we  can  only  insist  upon  a  poem's 


I  68  POST    LIMINIUM 

being  good  of  its  own  kind.  One  most  legitimate  kind  of 
poetry  is  the  political  and  social  poetry  that  is  directly 
practical  in  its  appeal :  propagandist  poetry.  At  a  time  of 
national  excitement,  verse  may  be  a  tremendous  ally  of  the 
national  cause  :  verse  that  is  a  trumpet-call  to  action  ;  verse 
full  of  great  memories  and  of  great  prophecies ;  verse  that 
denounces,  inspirits,  triumphs,  wails  in  melodies  memorable 
and  moving.  It  may  laugh,  or  weep,  or  shout  the  war-cry  : 
use  the  keenest  satire  in  the  homeliest  language,  or  thunder 
in  the  accents  of  a  Hebrew  prophet :  it  will  be  thrown  off 
at  a  white  heat,  it  must  be  ready  at  every  turn,  and  never 
flag.  It  passes  from  singing  of  a  thousand  years  ago,  to 
singing  of  yesterday  and  to-morrow ;  from  the  champions 
of  romance,  to  the  champions  of  to-day.  It  must  be 
vehement  and  clear,  emphatic  and  direct :  it  must  employ 
all  the  resource  of  bold  rhetoric,  large  phrases  and  great 
words.  It  must  fall  irresistibly  into  music,  and  be  sung 
by  the  crowds  in  the  street :  it  must  stir  the  blood,  and 
thrill  the  pulses,  and  set  the  heart  on  fire.  Such  verse  was 
the  best  verse  of  Young  Ireland :  and  I  do  not  know,  in 
any  language,  a  body  of  political  and  social  verse  at  once 
so  large  and  so  good.  Much  of  it  rises  far  above  the  level 
of  occasional  verse,  and  is  superb  national  poetry  ;  some  of 
it  was  written  by  men  who  would  have  been  poets  under 
any  circumstances,  by  the  compulsion  of  nature  and  the 
gift  of  fate.  There  is  no  lack  of  reasons  for  the  immense 
influence  of  this  verse  upon  subsequent  literature  :  for  one 
thing,  it  was  the  first  great  general  outburst  of  Irish 
verse  in  English ;  Moore  had  sung  by  himself,  and  not  only 
in  EngUsh,  but  in  England.  Now,  for  the  first  time,  a  mass 
of  national  literature  came  into  existence,  written  in  English 
by  politicians,  scholars,  men  of  the  learned  professions,  as 
well  as  by  men  of  the  people,  all  living  and  working  for 
Ireland  and  in  Ireland.  No  such  literary  glory  had 
accompanied  the  rise  of  the  United  Irishman,  or  any  other 
national  movement :     it   showed    the   world   that   if  the 


POETRY    AND    PATRIOTISM    IN    IRELAND  169 

ancient  speech  of  Ireland  were  doomed  and  dying,  yet  the 
Irish  genius  could  express  the  Irish  spirit  in  the  language  of 
their  conquerors,  with  no  loss  of  national  enthusiasm  and 
national  passion.  Headed,  as  the  movement  was,  by  at  least 
two  or  three  men  of  literary  genius,  and  a  score  or  so  of 
exceptional  literary  talents,  its  writings,  and  especially  its 
verse,  became  as  it  were,  the  sacred  scriptures  of  the 
national  cause.  And  for  Ireland,  they  are  indeed  KXT^/xara 
cs  aet,  possessions  for  all  time,  justly  venerated  and  loved. 
But  this  very  splendour  of  achievement  blinded,  in  some 
ways,  the  critical  faculties  :  we  have  been  tempted  to  forget 
that  the  work,  done  in  the  rapture  and  heat  of  a  great 
enterprise,  must  have  the  defects  of  its  qualities.  In  many 
cases  the  penalty  paid  for  immediate  success,  won  on  an 
instant,  was  a  lack  of  perfection,  the  abiding  marks  of  haste. 
And  much  of  the  work,  admirable  alike  in  intention  and  in 
execution,  had  no  pretensions  to  being  work  of  the  highest 
order :  it  belongs,  definitely  and  decidedly,  to  the  class  of 
popular  political  verse.  Now,  whilst  the  peasant  poetry, 
the  folk-songs  of  most  countries,  (and  Ireland  is  no 
exception),  are  beautiful,  and  artistically  excellent,  the 
more  purely  political  verse,  the  verse  expressing  national 
sentiments  of  hope  and  fear,  defiance  or  doubt,  are  always 
inferior  to  the  folk-songs,  and  are  often  abominable.  If 
there  be  a  worse  poem  than  '^  God  save  the  Queen,"  I  do 

not  know  it : — 

"  Confound  their  politics, 
Frustrate  their  knavish  tricks  !  " 

I  ask  you,  is  that  poetry?  Is  it  even  decent  verse? 
Does  it  show  any  fine  and  beautiful  use  of  language  ?  Or, 
take  the  "  Marseillaise,"  and  "  Wacht  am  Rhein  " ;  are  they 
distinguished  and  superior  examples  of  French  and  German 
poetry?  Yet  to  hear  a  vast  multitude  of  French  or 
Germans  singing  those  songs,  swayed  with  one  storm  of 
emotion,  brings  all  the  blood  to  one's  heart,  and  the  tears 
to  one's  eyes :  the  air  seems  charged  with  electricity.     A 


170  POST  LIMINIUM 

regimental  march  may  be  very  far  from  good  music :  but 
the  first  roll  of  the  drums  and  thrilling  of  the  fifes  make 
many  a  man  "  burn  to  be  a  soldier."    It  is  simply  and  solely 
association  that  has  this  magical  effect :  association  can  turn 
downright  ugUness  into  a  thing  of  beauty,  or,  at  the  least, 
into  something  lovable.     Think  of  some  house  which  you 
have  known  all  your  life  :  it  may  be  ugly,  uncomfortable, 
and  all  that  is  distressing ;  but  what  a  world  of  memories 
centre  there,  and  make  it  the  dearest  place  on  earth  to  you  ! 
It  is  the  same  with  everything :  remember  Scott  in  Italy, 
blind  to  its  beauty  and  its  charm,  hungering  for  the  heather 
and  the  wild  hills  of  his  home,  and  murmuring  old  Jacobite 
songs   in   places   golden   with   classic    memories :    or   the 
Brontes,  sick  at  heart  in  glittering  Brussels,  with  longing 
for  their  lonely  Yorkshire  moors.     Think  with  what  regret 
we  consent  to  the  necessary  destruction  of  some  church  or 
public  building  no  longer  serviceable,  but   thronged  with 
old  recollections  !    I  need  not  speak  here  of  the  Irish  exile's 
hunger  for  his  old  home  in  the  old  land,  however  prosperous 
he  be  elsewhere,  and  however  hard  may  have  been  the  old 
life.     It  is  this  way  that  things,  in  themselves  undesirable, 
receive  a  consecration  from  memory  and  habit  and  associa- 
tion.    The  most  magnificent  lyric  in  the  world  could  not 
replace  "  God  save  the  Queen  "  in  the  heart  of  the  loyal 
Englishman.    But  associations  do  not  alter  facts :  the  house, 
the  landscape,  the  poem  endeared  to  us,  have  no  attraction 
for  the  stranger,  the  dispassionate  critic,  who  does  not  feel 
their  glamour.     And  so  the  verse  of  Young  Ireland,  good, 
bad,  and  indifferent,  has  been  accepted  altogether,   as  a 
memory  to  the  older  men,  as  a  tradition  to  the  younger  : 
this  not  wholly  to  the  advantage  of  Irish  literature,  though 
much  to  the  credit  of  Irish  nature. 

Perhaps  the  most  irritating  mode  of  criticism  is  to 
complain  of  the  thing  criticized  for  not  being  something 
else.  A  poet  writes  a  little  book  of  light  songs,  and  he  is 
told  that  this  is  all  very  well  in  its  way,  but  why  does  he 


POETRY   AND   PATRIOTISM    IN    IRELAND  171 

not  try  his  hand  at  an  epic  ?  He  writes,  let  us  say,  dreams 
and  all  manner  of  imaginative  things,  in  plaintive,  lovely 
cadences,  about  the  faeries,  or  about  the  mysteries  of  the 
world,  birth  and  life  and  death,  writing  out  of  the  depths  of 
his  own  nature ;  and  lo  !  instead  of  being  grateful,  we  abuse 
him  for  not  writing  historical  ballads,  valiant  and  national, 
upon  Patrick  Sarsfield  or  Owen  Roe,  But  what  if  he  be 
wholly  incapable  of  writing  historical  ballads  ?  Shelley  said 
of  himself,  that  to  go  to  him  for  human  nature  was  like 
going  to  a  ginshop  for  a  leg  of  mutton.  Not  every  poet 
can  be,  or  is  bound  to  be,  a  Tyrtaeus.  I  know  no  greater 
patriotic  poems  than  certain  sonnets  of  Milton  or  Words- 
worth ;  certain  passages  of  Shakespeare  and  Spenser,  Virgil 
and  Dante ;  certain  plays  of  ^schylus,  and  odes  of  Pindar ; 
but  not  one  of  them  could  send  the  soldier  on  to  death 
or  victory  with  such  a  heroism  as  many  a  simple  soldier's 
song  could  rouse  :  yet  the  simple  song  is  not,  therefore,  the 
greater  poetry.  Except,  it  may  be,  in  some  primitive  societies, 
such  as  was  possibly  the  Homeric,  the  greater  poetry  is  not 
the  most  popular.  Perhaps  it  should  be :  but  that  is 
another  question.  And  when,  as  in  our  own  country,  there 
is  a  native  instinct  that  prompts  the  mass  of  the  people 
to  love  music  and  poetry,  and  any  ancient  tradition  of 
reverence  towards  them,  we  are  not  unnaturally  disposed  to 
estimate  all  music  and  poetry  by  the  popular  standards, 
and  not  always  by  the  best  popular  standards.  Surely,  we 
say,  poetry  that  touches  the  hearts  of  all,  learned  and 
unlearned,  rich  and  poor,  is  the  true  poetry :  let  us  be 
simple,  unsophisticated,  natural  in  our  tastes.  Let  others 
write  for  cliques  and  coteries,  and  live  upon  academic 
applause  or  mutual  admiration :  we  are  content  with  a 
poetry  popular  and  patriotic.  It  sounds  very  manly  and 
independent,  a  refreshing  contrast  to  the  affected  asstheticism 
of  certain  schools :  but  it  cuts  us  off  for  ever  from  the 
company  of  the  great  classics.  It  is  equally  fatal  to  be  for 
ever  clamouring  for  a  great  classic,  and  demanding  him 


T73  POST    LIMIXIUM 

of  all  the  fates.  It  is  useless  to  be  perpetually  longing  for 
a  man  who  shall  do  for  Ireland  what  Scott  did  for  Scotland  : 
it  is  ungenerous  and  unjust,  when  a  writer  does  his  best  in 
his  own  way,  to  say  that  this  is  not  the  immortal  work  which 
Ireland  wants.  We  do  not  reproach  a  buttercup  for  not 
being  a  rose.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  a  nation  does 
not  produce  its  greatest  art  in  times  of  storm  and  stress,  but 
at  and  after  the  period  of  triumph :  when  the  nation  is 
exulting  in  its  strength  and  glory,  with  a  sense  of  new  youth 
and  health  and  joy.  Melancholy,  and  sorrow,  and  the  cry 
of  pain,  it  has  been  said  by  some,  are  more  poetical  than 
serenity  and  ardour :  for  my  own  part,  I  do  not  believe  it. 
Rather,  I  believe  that  the  Irish  poetry  of  free  and  triumphant 
Ireland  will  have  the  wonderful  joyousness  and  happy 
splendour  of  the  old  heroic  and  romantic  Ireland,  chastened 
and  tempered  by  the  seriousness  inseparable  from  Chris- 
tianity. Meanwhile,  let  us  accept  and  encourage  all 
excellence :  there  is  room  for  all.  Let  us  have  our  ringing 
rhetoric,  strong  verse  with  the  clash  of  swords  in  it;  our 
sorrowful  dirges  for  the  dear  and  dead  of  to-day,  and  of 
long  ages  past ;  our  homely  songs  of  laughter  and  of  tears ; 
but  let  us  welcome  all  who  write  for  the  love  of  Ireland, 
even  if  they  write  in  fashions  less  familiar.  It  is  absurd, 
and  insulting  to  Ireland,  to  think  that  Irish  genius  cannot 
make  the  Irish  spirit  felt  in  any  form  that  is  good  and  fine 
of  itself.  Think  of  Farquhar  and  Steele,  Goldsmith  and 
Sheridan  :  they  spent  nearly  their  whole  lives  in  England 
among  Englishmen,  under  the  strongest  English  influences, 
and  they  wrote  in  English  forms  for  English  readers  :  yet 
we  feel  the  grace,  the  gentle  humour,  the  delicacy  and 
charm,  which  stamp  their  work  as  Irish.  After  all,  who  is 
to  decide  what  is,  absolutely  and  definitely,  the  Celtic  and 
Irish  note?  Many  a  time  I  have  shown  my  English  friends 
Irish  poems,  which  Irish  critics  have  declared  to  be  un- 
Irish :  and  the  English  verdict  has  constantly  been  :  "  How 
un-English !  how  Celtic !  what  a  strange,  remote,  far-away 


POETRY   AND    PATRIOTISM    IN    IRELAND  17,^ 

beauty  in  the  music  and  in  the  colour ! "  These  poems, 
then,  can  find  no  resting-place  in  either  country ;  are  they 
to  wait  becalmed  in  mid-channel?  The  most  singular 
criticisms  are  sometimes  made  upon  these  hapless  poets. 
My  friend  Mr.  Yeats  has  been  informed  that  he  is  a 
disciple  of  Rossetti  and  of  Tennyson ;  now,  no  two  poets 
could  be  less  alike  than  Rossetti  and  Tennyson;  and  no 
one  could  be  less  like  either  of  them  than  Mr.  Yeats.  But 
he  dares  to  write  in  his  own  style,  upon  his  own  themes ; 
and  because  they  are  not  the  style  and  the  themes  familiar 
to  us  from  old  associations,  we  rush  to  the  conclusion  that 
he  is  treading  in  the  footsteps  of  some  English  poet, 
despising  Irish  art.  Another  instance:  I  have  heard  it 
said  that  the  four  volumes  of  Mrs.  Hinkson  show  a  steady 
increase  in  artistic  power,  but  a  noticeable  decrease  in  the 
true  Irish  spirit  of  poetry :  an  extremely  doubtful  com- 
pliment to  the  true  Irish  spirit.  Cardinal  Newman  tells  us 
of  the  village  schools  in  his  youth,  where  the  charge  for 
teaching  good  manners  was  an  "extra  twopence."  Is 
artistic  workmanship  in  our  poetry  worth  but  an  "  extra 
twopence"?  What  the  critic  meant  was  that  in  Mrs. 
Hinkson's  earlier  work  there  were  a  greater  fluency  and 
flow  of  sentiment,  less  restraint  and  careful  finish,  more 
obvious  rhetoric  and  impulsiveness.  The  dainty  delicacy 
of  the  later  work,  its  mastery  of  rhythm  and  curbing  of 
haste,  were  lost  upon  him:  the  idea  that  all  art  implies 
discipline  and  austerity  of  taste,  a  constant  progress  towards 
an  ideal  perfection,  though  his  earliest  ancestors  knew  it 
well,  seemed  strange  to  him.  Perhaps  the  most  familiar 
of  English  poems  is  Gray's  "  Elegy "  :  the  two  loveliest 
stanzas  Gray  ever  wrote  he  deliberately  rejected  from  the 
poem,  because  they  seemed  to  him  redundant,  dispropor- 
tionate, a  dwelling  too  long  upon  one  thought.  Dante 
speaks  of  his  long  labour  at  his  art  as  the  work  which  had 
made  him  lean  and  gaunt  and  worn.  This  passion  for 
perfection  seems  to  me  as  truly  Celtic  a  thing  as  the  ready 


174  POST  LIMINIUM 

indulgence  of  sentiment ;  our  illuminations,  our  penmanship, 
our  work  in  stone  and  metal,  all  our  arts  of  design,  show 
an  infinite  love  of  taking  pains.     The  very  heretics  among 
the  Celts,  as  Pelagius  and  Erigena,  exemplify  the   Celtic 
subtlety.     But  this  "  battle  of  the  books  "  is  not  confined  to 
the  Celts  of  Ireland :  the  same  question,  in  very  much  the 
same  form,  rages  in  Wales.     Go   to  an  Eisteddfod,  or  to 
any  Welsh  gathering  of  literary  patriots  :  you  will  probably 
hear  discussions  upon  the  true  Welsh  spirit,  upon  English 
influence,  upon  the  characteristics  of  the  ancient  literature 
and  the  new,  upon  the  possibility  of  a  Welshman's  writing 
English   in   a  way  patriotically  and  unmistakably  Welsh. 
This  patriotic  anxiety  for  a  national  literature  is  an  un- 
impeachable virtue,  but  it  should  be  displayed  with  dignity 
and  confidence.     Many  of  us,  at  present,  are  somewhat 
agitated  and  nervous ;  we  ask  hasty  and  suspicious  questions  : 
"  Is  that  quite  Celtic  ?     Is  this  book  typically  Irish  ?     Yes  ! 
they  are  certainly  fine  poems,  but  are  they  not  English  in 
quality;   have  they  the  genuine  national  note;   is  it  the 
work  that  a   patriot  should  be  doing?"     All   this  is  put 
forward  with  a  certain  querulousness  and  captiousness :  it 
seems  to  imply  a  certain  distrust  of  the  Irish  genius,  and  of 
one  another.     And  the  tumult  of  our  political  passions  is 
apt  to  disturb  our  judgments.     I  would  rather  read  a  fine 
poem  upon  Sarsfield  and  the  "  Defence  of  Limerick/'  than 
upon  Walker  and  the  "  Defence  of  Derry  " ;  but  if  Colonel 
Saunderson,  or  Dr.  Kane,  were  to  give  us  a  stirring  poem 
upon    the    courage    and    endurance    of  Walker  and    the 
'prentices  of  Derry,  without  ill-feeling  and  bad  blood,  I 
should  reckon  it  a  gain  to  our  literature.     Yet  our  Irish 
critic  who  spoke  his  mind  to  that  effect,  may  be  thought 
a  bit  of  an  Orangeman  at  heart.     It  would  be  a  case  of 
Timeo    Danaos   et  dona  fererites :    we    should    look    with 
suspicion  upon  the  poetical  gifts  of  our  political  opponents. 
And  there  seems  to  be  no  place  for  a  poet  who,  though  he 
be  intensely  national  in  temperament  and  sympathy,  may 


POETRY    AND   PATRIOTISM    IN    IRELAND  1 75 

be  unfitted  by  nature  to  write  poetry  with  an  obvious 
and  immediate  bearing  upon  the  national  cause.  Imagine 
a  poet  with  no  strong  taste  for  history,  no  fierce  rhetorical 
note  in  his  music,  no  power  of  stirring  a  popular  enthusiasm  ; 
yet,  from  the  crown  of  his  head  to  the  sole  of  his  foot,  Irish 
and  nothing  but  Irish.  Upon  occasions  of  great  emotion, 
a  leader's  death,  a  national  victory,  what  you  will,  odes  and 
songs  may  be  forthcoming  by  the  score  from  others :  he 
will  feel  as  deep  a  sorrow,  or  as  wild  a  joy,  but  his  Muse 
will  be  silent.  He  will  talk  of  these  things  as  much  as 
others,  or  write  as  much  about  them  in  prose;  but  in 
poetry  he  has  not  the  necessary  gift.  He  is  not  proud  of 
lacking  it :  he  may  be  sorry  that  he  has  not  that  string  to 
his  lyre.  But  at  any  rate  he  has  not  got  it,  and  so  he 
cannot  play  upon  it.  And  forthwith  we  have  our  doubts  :  we 
begin  to  think  that  such  a  poet  is  of  no  service  to  the 
cause.  Or,  perhaps  we  ask  him  for  an  historical  novel 
upon  Ireland  in  Tudor  or  Stuart  times ;  or  for  an  epic  of 
the  Red  Branch  Knights,  or  the  Irish  Saints;  or  for  a 
tragedy  upon  Emmet  or  Lord  Edward :  whilst  his  whole 
faculty  and  disposition  may  be  lyrical,  and  meditative,  and 
personal.  Or,  perhaps,  we  fall  foul  of  his  lyrics  for  not 
having  certain  simplicities  and  beauties  dear  to  us  in  the 
folk-songs  of  our  country :  but  who  said  that  they  had,  or 
tried  to  have,  them  ?  There  may  be  charms  in  the  new 
verse,  not  less  Irish  than  the  old.  A  wider,  deeper,  higher 
vision  would  recognise  that  Irish  nationality  and  Irish 
patriotism  can  make  themselves  powerful  in  a  thousand 
forms  and  themes  of  literature.  Consider  the  many 
English  echoes,  or  reproductions,  or  imitations  of  Greek 
forms  and  themes  :  from  Milton's  "  Samson  Agonistes  "  up  to 
Mr.  Swinburne's  "Atalanta  in  Calydon;"  they  are  intensely 
English,  not  really  Greek.  A  living  literature  cannot  help 
being  national :  it  may  feed  upon  the  literature  of  the  past, 
and  of  other  nations ;  but,  if  it  be  good  literature,  it  must 
bear  the  sign  and  seal  of  its  own  nationality,  and  of  its  own 


176  POST   LIMINIUIM 

age.     Indeed,  nationality  lives  in  literature  and  art,  when 
it  is  almost  dead  in  other  things  :  they  are  the  expressions 
of  the  soul  of  a  country ;  they  are  racy  of  the  soil ;  they 
refuse  to   serve  their  country's  conquerors.     On  the  con- 
trary, they  take  their  captors  captive,  as  history  has  told  us 
a  hundred  times.     A  cosmopolitan  artist,  a  citizen  of  the 
world,  with  no  local  patriotism  in  his  heart,  has  never  yet 
done  anything  memorable  in  poetry,  or  in  anything  else. 
Could  all  his  wild   philosophy,  his  vast   pondering  upon 
universal  problems,  his  devotion  to  the  poets  and  thinkers 
of  Germany,  make  Carlyle  anything  but  a  Scotch  Calvinist, 
a  son  of  John   Knox,  a  child  of  the  Covenanters?     Or 
could  the  wild  romance,  the  brilliant  levity,  the  mocking 
gaiety  and  cynicism,  of  his  Parisian  life,  make  the  German 
and   Jewish    Heine   anything   but   a   son   of  the  German 
Fatherland,  and   a   child   of  the  house  of  Israel  ?     It  is 
among  the  strongest  of  earthly  instincts,  this  clinging  to  our 
nationality  and  race  :  this,  far  more  than  diplomacy,  has 
changed   the    face   of  Europe   in    our   country,    and   may 
change    it    still   more.     Poetry  and   patriotism   are   each 
other's  guardian  angels,  and  therefore  inseparable.     Virgil's 
master  was   Homer,  Dante's   master  was   Virgil,  Milton's 
masters  were    Dante,  Virgil,  and   Homer :  yet  could  four 
poems  be  less  like  each  other,  could  four  poems  be  more 
intensely  national  than  the  Iliad,  the  yE?ieid,  the  Divine 
Comedy,  and  Paradise  Lost?     Unquestionably,  we  would 
rather    have    our   poets    choose    Irish    themes,   and    sing 
of  Tara  sooner  than  of  Troy ;  of  Ossian  sooner  than  of 
Orpheus :  but  if  they  went  to  China  or  to  Peru  for  their 
inspiration,    the    result    would    be    neither    Chinese    nor 
Peruvian,  but  "kindly  Irish  of  the  Irish"  still.     Our  race 
is  not   lost  by  spreading   itself  over   the  world,  and  our 
literature  would  not  lose  its  Irish  accent  by  expeditions 
into   all    lands   and   times.      Let    Irish   literature   be   de- 
Anglicized,  by  all  means  :  away  with  all  feeble  copies  of  the 
fashionable  stuff  that  happens  to  amuse  London  Society  for 


POETRY   AND    PATRIOTISM    IN    IRELAND  177 

a  season,  and  even  with  mere  copies  of  distinctly  good 
English  work  !  It  is  neither  national,  nor  patriotic,  to  wait 
eagerly  and  humbly  upon  the  tastes  and  the  verdicts  of  the 
English  public  and  of  the  English  press.  But  if  we  are  to 
foster,  encourage,  and  develop  Irish  literature,  and  not 
least  of  all,  Irish  poetry,  it  must  be  with  a  wise  generosity ; 
in  a  finely  national,  not  in  a  pettily  provincial,  spirit. 
Take  the  revival  of  German  literature  and  its  emancipation 
from  French  influence :  that  great  movement  which  the 
Germans  call  Anfkldrwig  zndi  the  French  the  edairecissement 
of  Germany.  Beginning,  practically,  with  Lessing  and 
Winckelmann  and  Herder,  continued  by  Goethe  and 
Schiller,  and  later  by  Heine,  it  created  the  first  splendid 
period  of  national  German  literature.  It  perpetrated  end- 
less absurdities,  but  it  succeeded ;  and  that  because  of  its 
free  and  liberal  spirit.  The  pioneers  and  chiefs  of  the 
movement  pressed  everything  into  its  service :  Greek  art 
and  literature,  all  the  arts  of  Italy,  the  Elizabethan  drama, 
Macpherson's  Ossian,  the  folk-songs  and  ancient  lays  of 
many  lands,  the  romance  of  the  Middle  Ages ;  all  that  an 
ardent  curiosity,  or  a  profound  scholarship,  could  reach, 
was  sought  out  and  studied  and  brought  to  bear  upon 
the  revival  of  German  literature.  And  the  result  was 
magnificently  German :  there  was  no  vague,  cosmopolitan, 
unnational  spirit  in  the  results  of  that  immense  enthusiasm. 
One  cannot  read  the  memoirs,  biographies,  histories  of 
that  time,  still  less  the  poetry,  without  feeling  oneself  in 
the  presence  of  an  irresistible  patriotism.  And  everything 
helped,  every  study  and  pursuit :  if  German  prose,  of 
all  ugly  things,  came  to  be  written  with  the  lucidity  of 
Plato's  Greek ;  if  German  poetry  rose  from  the  dead,  and 
sang  a  thousand  melodies  upon  a  thousand  instruments,  it 
was  because  a  deep  desire  for  knowledge,  a  passionate 
ambition  for  true  culture,  taught  the  German  poets  the  way 
to  be  German ;  indeed,  showed  them  how  to  preserve  the 
ancient  German  virtues,  whilst  creating  a  new  literature, 

N 


178  POST  LIMINIUM 

which  should  be  the  glory  of  Germany.  True,  the  social 
state  of  Germany  then  had  little  in  common  with  the  social 
state  of  Ireland  now:  yet  the  essential  spirit  of  their 
movement  is  ours  also.  If  we  considered  the  causes  and 
conditions  of  all  that  is  greatest^  in  the  Italian  Renaissance, 
or  in  the  Elizabethan  outburst  of  literary  glory,  we  should 
find  similar  facts :  the  re-discovery  of  the  ancient  classic 
world;  the  re-discovery  of  the  new  world;  the  thirst  for 
knowledge  and  experience  ;  a  sudden  thrill  of  pride  and 
hope  in  men's  hearts  at  the  thought  that  Italy,  England, 
their  own  countries,  were  rivalling,  in  their  own  national 
ways,  the  great  records  of  the  past ; — all  this  went  to  the 
creation  of  those  great  arts  and  literatures.  France,  too, 
in  her  romantic  revival  of  1830,  turned  to  her  own  national 
uses,  to  uses  completely  French,  whatever  in  Italy,  Germany, 
England,  Spain,  she  could  lay  her  hands  upon.  Is  Ireland 
to  be  the  only  nation  which  influences  from  without  are 
bound  to  ruin  and  unnationalize ;  the  only  nation  incapable 
of  assimilating  to  herself,  of  nationalizing  and  naturalizing 
the  heritage  of  art  and  learning  left  by  other  nations  ?  It 
was  not  so  once  :  not  in  the  early  ages  of  Irish  Christianity. 
If  Saint  Sedulius,  of  whom  Dr.  Sigerson  has  told  us,  were 
alive  to-day,  he  would  certainly  find  critics  to  call  him 
unpatriotic  for  taking  a  foreign  metre,  and  ingrafting  upon 
it  Irish  graces.  As  I  have  pleaded,  let  us  have  no  coercion 
in  Irish  Hterature :  I  would  add,  let  us  have  no  protection. 
Like  the  Norsemen  and  the  Normans,  let  all  that  is  good 
in  literature  and  learning  enter  Ireland,  and  become  more 
Irish  than  the  Irish.  Even  if,  like  the  Norsemen  and  the 
Normans,  it  enters  forcibly  and  against  opposition,  I  am 
sure  that  the  result  will  be  the  same  :  the  Irish  genius  will 
captivate  the  foreign,  and  grow  itself  the  stronger  and 
more  brilliant.  You  see,  I  have  faith  in  the  Irish  genius : 
I  do  not  believe  that  anything  can  so  take  possession  of 
it,  and  pervert  it,  as  to  drive  the  nationality  out  of  it. 
But,  perhaps,  some    [of   those   like-minded]    are  thinking 


POETRY    AND    PATRIOTISM    IN    IRELAND  179 

that  I  am  making  much  ado  about  nothing  all  this  time. 
Well !  of  course,  no  one  [who  knows],  distrusts  the  power 
and  indomitable  vigour  of  the  Irish  genius.  But  for  some 
time,  both  in  reading  Irish  papers  from  all  parts  of  the 
world,  and  in  discussing  Irish  matters  with  Irishmen  in 
England,  I  have  undoubtedly  found  a  certain  amiable 
narrowness,  now  and  then,  here  and  there  :  a  conservatism 
rather  obstinate  than  strong,  less  resolute  than  stubborn. 
Ask  these  conservatives  to  admit  some  good  Irish  qualities 
in  this  poem  or  in  that  novel  written  within  the  last  twenty 
years  :  the  answer  is  :  "  It's  not  what  I  call  Irish  ;  give  me 
Mangan,  give  me  Carleton."  Now,  it  is  extremely  easy 
to  be  less  great  than  IMangan  and  Carleton;  it  is  not 
impossible  to  be  greater ;  but  to  be  Mangan,  to  be  Carleton, 
is  a  clear  impossibility.  It  is  only  possible  to  aim  at  it  by 
imitating  them.  Imitation  may  be  the  sincerest  flattery, 
but  it  usually  produces  the  worst  literature.  In  Mangan's 
day,  perhaps,  less  fervent  nationalists  wished  that  Mangan 
would  write  like  Moore;  and  perhaps  they  exhorted 
Carleton  to  study  the  graces  of  Miss  Edgeworth,  and  the 
vivacities  of  Lady  Morgan.  The  really  great  and  im- 
perishable poets  who  adorned  the  middle  of  this  century 
had  no  such  narrowness.  We  cannot  imagine  Mangan 
jealously  and  anxiously  discouraging  new  ventures  of  the 
Irish  Muses.  We  cannot  think  of  Davis  laying  down 
absolute  laws  upon  what  is,  and  is  not,  verily  Celtic  and 
truly  Irish.  Again,  it  is  not  the  living  scholars,  most  busy 
in  preserving,  elucidating,  translating,  and  transmitting  to 
posterity  the  Gaelic  literature  of  every  age  and  kind,  who 
impose  these  fetters  upon  our  modern  literature.  Bat  I 
have  heard  some  of  my  countrymen  who  have  no  more 
Gaelic  than  I,  (and  I  have  none),  airily  and  easily  blaming  a 
veteran  Irish  poet,  still  among  us,  Mr.  de  Vere,  for  having 
no  real  Gaelic  tone,  no  insight  into  the  genuine  ancient 
spirit.  I  should  never  be  surprised  to  hear  Canon 
O'Hanlon  reproached  for  celebrating  the  "  Land  of  Leix  " 


l8o  POST   LIMINIUM 

in  the  Spenserian  stanza,  one  of  the  few  great  English 
forms  invented  in  England,  and  invented,  too,  by  a  very 
thorough-going  enemy  of  the  Irish  cause.  Again,  in  pro- 
jecting some  Irish  publication,  it  is  surely  an  open  question 
whether  it  should  be  solely  and  strictly  confined  to  Irish 
themes,  or  whether,  remembering  that 

"  One  in  name  and  in  fame 
Are  the  sea-divided  Gaels," 

it  should  sometimes  include  matters  of  collateral  interest : 
contrasts  and  comparisons,  in  social  and  literary  concerns, 
with  our  kinsmen  in  Wales  and  Brittany  and  Scotland. 
That,  surely,  is  not  opening  the  floodgates,  and  admitting 
cosmopolitan  culture  to  overwhelm  Ireland !  yet  such  pro- 
posals have  been  denounced  as  unpatriotic.  They  may  be 
inexpedient,  but  they  can  hardly  be  called  criminal.  It 
is  this  kind  of  exclusiveness  that  has  emboldened  me  to 
protest :  it  seems  to  me  a  fatal  interpretation  of  patriotism. 
That  true  son  and  servant  of  Ireland,  Berkeley,  used  to 
make  an  execrable  pun,  and  to  say  that  he  distinguished 
between  patriotism  and  pat-riotism ;  it  is  the  latter  quality 
which  produces  this  feverish  alarm  lest  Irishmen  should 
forget  Ireland,  if  they  try  to  serve  her  in  ways  savouring 
at  all,  or  seeming  to  savour,  of  novelty.  It  is  the  truer 
patriotism  which  refuses  to  be  panic-stricken,  though  it  is 
willing  to  be  prudent ;  a  militant  faith  is  one  thing,  and  an 
irritable  fussiness  another.  I  hope  there  is  not  an  Irishman 
anywhere,  (certainly  there  cannot  be  one  in  the  literary 
societies  of  Dublin  and  London),  who  does  not  agree  with 
every  word  of  Dr.  Douglas  Hyde's  eloquent  appeal  upon 
"  the  Necessity  for  de- Anglicizing  Ireland  "  ?  But  I  do 
not  see  why  Irishmen  should  not  make  raids  upon  other 
countries,  and  bring  home  the  spoils,  and  triumphantly 
Celticize  them,  and  lay  them  down  at  the  feet  of  Ireland. 
It  is  pleasant  to  think  that  Goldsmith,  dedicating  his  first 
famous   poem,   not   to   his   great   English   friends,  not  to 


POETRY   AND   PATRIOTISM   IN    IRELAND  l8l 

Reynolds  or  to  Johnson,  but  to  his  poor  Irish  brother  in 
his  poor  Irish  home, — pleasant  to  think  of  him,  all  through 
his  sorrows  and  his  triumphs,  still  remembering  the  old 
days  in  Ireland,  and  hoping  to  die  in  the  old  country. 

"And  as  a  hare,  whom  hounds  and  horns  pursue. 
Pants  to  the  place  from  whence  at  first  she  flew ; 
I  still  had  hopes,  my  long  vexations  past. 
Here  to  return,  and  die  at  home  at  last." 

Horace  was  right,  and  his  old  proverbial  wisdom  has  a 
good  sense  as  well  as  a  bad :  patrice  quis  extil,  se  qtwqnc 
fugii :  caelum  non  aninmm  mutant :  we  may  leave  Ireland, 
but  we  could  not  if  we  would,  help  being  Irish.  It  is  so 
with  our  poetry,  and  with  all  our  fine  literature  ;  there  is 
an  Irish  foundation,  an  Irish  origin,  for  it  all.  Patriotism, 
said  Dr.  Johnson,  is  the  last  refuge  of  a  scoundrel,  and 
certainly  there  are  many  ways  of  being  patriotic,  as  we 
have  bitter  cause  to  know.  But  our  poetry  has  been,  and 
is  still,  patriotic  in  the  best  of  senses  :  it  has  been  inspired 
by  our  own  country  in  a  magnificent  variety  of  ways.  It 
is  not  now  under  the  discipline  of  ancient  Ireland,  the 
supremacy  of  bardic  colleges ;  it  were  a  pity,  were  it  to  fall 
under  the  authority,  and  to  be  checked  by  the  iron  rod,  of 
an  unsympathetic  criticism,  and  by  the  narrow  spirit  of  a 
limited  outlook.  It  may  be  that  Irish  poetry  is  in  a  state 
of  change,  losing,  perhaps,  some  virtues,  but  gaining 
others;  displaying  in  fresh  forms,  under  new  aspects,  the 
glory  and  the  beauty,  the  deeds  and  the  dreams,  the  legend 
and  the  history,  of  our  country.  Consider  the  fortunes  of 
that  marvellous  cycle  of  epic  and  romance,  which  belongs 
to  Wales,  Scotland,  Cornwall,  Brittany,  and  Ireland :  the 
story  of  King  Arthur  and  his  knights.  Malory  in  England 
first  cast  it  into  a  comparatively  modern  English  form,  in 
his  superb  prose ;  Milton  and  Dryden  both  intended  to 
write  epics  upon  it,  and  unhappily  did  not ;  Sir  Richard 
Blackmore,  worst  of  English  poets,  unhappily  did  :  English 


l82  rOST    LIMINIUM 

poetry  abounds  in  references  to  it ;  in  our  own  day,  five 
English  poets,  three  of  them  partly  Celtic,  Tennyson, 
Arnold,  Hawker  of  Morwenstow,  Mr.  Swinburne,  and  Mr. 
William  Morris,  have  treated  it  in  manifold  ways,  with  an 
extraordinary  diversity  of  styles  ;  but  they  have  not  modern- 
ized and  spoilt  it  out  of  all  recognition.  Each  in  his 
way,  with  a  different  ethical  and  artistic  aim,  has  paid 
homage  to  the  enduring  beauty,  the  enduring  grandeur,  of 
the  ancient  Celtic  story.  They  have  been  utterly  unable, 
by  any  Saxon  perversity,  to  de-Celticize  it ;  nor  can  the 
magnificent  stories  of  our  own  country  be  robbed  of  their 
inherent  Irish  character,  by  any  variety  of  treatment  at 
the  hands  of  Irish  poets.  But  there  is  always  a  spirit  of 
protest  against  literary  changes.  "  This  will  never  do  ! " 
cried  the  leading  critic  of  the  day,  upon  reading  Words- 
worth ;  Keats,  Shelley,  Tennyson,  Browning,  Arnold,  had 
plenty  of  scorn  and  discouragement  to  face.  And  the  cry 
is  always :  "  You  are  affected,  you  are  effeminate,  you  are 
obscure,  you  are  not  like  the  good  old  poets  of  our  child- 
hood, you  are  running  after  false  models,  you  are  rejecting 
the  traditions  of  our  literature."  The  wheel  goes  slowly 
round :  and  the  despised  and  ridiculed  young  innovators 
become  classics,  and  find  burial  in  Westminster  Abbey. 
It  need  not  be  otherwise  in  Ireland.  Where  we  clearly 
recognise  excellence,  it  is  rash  to  remonstrate  with  it  for 
not  being  precisely  our  kind  of  excellence.  Any  clear  and 
definite  rejection  of  Irish  aims  and  interests  speaks  for 
itself.  Any  poet  who  sees  no  greatness  and  no  beauty  in 
Irish  legend  and  history,  from  the  beginning  of  the  world 
up  to  to-day,  could  we  imagine  so  blind  a  fool,  condemns 
himself,  and  may  write  Anglo-Saxon  epics  for  the  English ; 
but  from  the  beginning  of  the  world,  (and  that  is  the  only 
safe  patriotic  date  for  the  beginning  of  Irish  history),  up  to 
to-day,  is  a  vast  period,  within  which  there  is  room  for  an 
infinite  variety  of  themes,  and  moods,  and  manners.  We 
are  almost  past  the  age  in  which  Irishmen  could  disdain  the 


POETRY   AND    PATRIOTISM    IN    IRELAND  1 83 

Irish  language,  laugh  at  the  Irish  legends,  and  devote  them- 
selves entirely  to  English  literature.  If  there  be  any  vitality 
at  all  in  the  Irish  literary  endeavours  of  to-day,  it  lies  in 
their  freedom  from  that  spirit  of  ignorant  contempt,  and  in 
their  determination  to  cherish  our  rich  inheritance. 

But  at  this  point  let  me  illustrate  part  of  what  I  mean, 
in  saying  that  a  certain  change  may  be  in  course  of  pro- 
gress in  our  poetry :  for  example,  in  one  small  point  of 
rhythmical  and  metrical  matters.  In  reading  much  Irish 
poetry  of  this  century,  we  note  the  great  amount  of  it  that 
is  written  in  swinging  measures,  anapoests  and  dactyls ; 
verse  that  gallops  and  leaps  along;  measures  adapted  or 
copied,  in  some  cases,  from  the  GaeHc.  Now,  since  Gaelic 
and  English  are  not  the  same  language,  the  same  or  similar 
metres  have  a  different  effect  in  each  language :  as,  in  a 
most  familiar  case,  that  of  the  Greek  and  the  Latin  hex- 
ameter. Being,  to  my  shame  and  sorrow,  ignorant  of 
Gaelic,  I  can  only  judge,  by  hearing  them  read,  the  effect 
of  certain  Gaelic  metres ;  and  that,  of  course,  imperfectly : 
but  the  effect  seems  very  different  in  the  Gaelic  and  in  the 
English.  It  may  well  be  that  the  metre  is  now  statelier, 
now  softer_,  in  the  Gaelic  than  in  the  English,  not  to 
mention  the  absence  in  the  English  of  much  artful  and 
elaborate  assonance,  alliteration,  and  kindred  delicacies. 
Irishmen  can  partly  reproduce  Irish  turns  of  expression  in 
English,  and  give  to  the  English  language  a  certain  Irish 
charm,  but  they  cannot  change  its  inherent  character. 
Now,  it  is  unquestionable  that  the  loveliest  English  verse, 
the  most  stately,  musical,  and  sweet,  has  not  been  written 
in  these  rapid  measures.  From  Chaucer  to  Tennyson,  it 
has  been  mainly  written  in  iambic  and  trochaic  metres. 
Even  the  metrical  accompUshments  of  Shelley,  or  of  Cole- 
ridge, or  of  Mr.  Swinburne,  have  not  been  able  to  give  to 
the  rapid  swinging  measures  the  dignity  or  charm  of  the 
others.  Nor  can  Irish  writers  convey  to  them  a  dignity  or 
charm  which  in  English  they  are  incapable  of  receiving. 


l84  POST    LIMINIUM 

But  in  some  cases,  it  may  be,  through  Gaelic  associations ; 
in  other  cases,  because  these  measures  are  excellent  for 
popular  purposes;  our  writers  have  been  fond  of  them, 
and  from  Moore  onwards,  have  often  turned  them  to 
admirable  account.  But  compare  them  with  the  grander 
measures  :  take  the  first  lines  of  Mangan's  "  Lament  for  the 
Knight  of  Kerry  "  : 

*'  There  was  lifted  up  one  voice  of  woe, 
One  lament  of  more  than  mortal  grief, 
Through  the  wide  South  to  and  fro, 
For  a  fallen  chief." 

Now  take  the  first  lines  from  his  "  Dream  of  John 
AlacDonnell "  : 

"  I  lay  in  unrest ;  old  thoughts  of  pain, 
That  I  struggled  in  vain  to  smother, 
Like  midnight  spectres  haunted  my  brain  ; 
Dark  fantasies  chased  each  other." 

As  mere  sound,  it  is  incomparably  inferior.  Or  take 
the  first  lines  from  a  poem  by  D'Arcy  McGee : 

*'  Long,  long  ago,  beyond  the  misty  space 
Of  twice  a  thousand  years, 
In  Erin  old  there  dwelt  a  mighty  race, 
Taller  than  Roman  spears." 

Now  take  the  first  lines  from  a  poem  by  Florence 
MacCarthy : 

"  Come,  Liberty,  come  !  we  are  ripe  for  thy  coming  ; 
Come,  freshen  the  hearts  where  thy  rival  has  trod  ; 
Come,  richest  and  rarest !  come,  fiercest  and  fairest  ! 
Come,  daughter  of  science  !  come,  gift  of  the  god  !  " 

One  could  dance  to  it,  and  it  would  be,  splendid  to  sing : 
but  it  cannot  compare  in  beauty  with  the  other  rhythm. 
One  would  be  exhilarating  on  a  cracked  fiddle  or  a  banjo  ; 
the  other  has   the   majesty  of  a   cathedral   organ.     Two 


POETRY   AND   PATRIOTISM    IN    IRELAND  185 

more  examples  from  Mangan  :  first,  from  the  '^  Lament  for 
the  Princes  " : 

"  O  woman  of  the  piercing  wail, 

Who  mournest  o'er  yon  mound  of  clay 
With  sigh  and  groan, 
Would  God  thou  wert  among  the  Gael ! 
Thou  wouldst  not  then  from  day  to  day 
Weep  thus  alone ." 

Now  some  lines  from  "  Rury  and  Dervorgilla  "  : 

"  Know  ye  the  tale  of  the  Prince  of  Oriel, 
Of  Rury,  last  of  his  line  of  kings  ? 
I  pen  it  here  as  a  sad  memorial, 
Of  how  much  woe  reckless  folly  brings." 

Again,  the  difference  in  dignity  and  charm  is  very  great, 
but  the  swinging  measures,  in  a  vast  variety,  have  been 
endeared  and  consecrated  by  a  thousand  associations  with 
songs,  and  dances,  and  spirited  ballads :  and  very  de- 
lightful they  can  be.  But  if  a  living  poet  choose  to  leave 
them  alone,  and  to  concentrate  his  mind  and  ear  upon  the 
less  rhetorical,  and  more  delicate  or  stately  rhythms,  and 
in  all  his  metrical  work  to  aim  at  conveying  into  English 
verse  something  of  a  Celtic  effect,  by  paying  to  the 
capacities  of  English  verse  such  attention  as  the  old  Gaelic 
poets  might  have  paid,  were  they  living  and  writing  in 
English  now, — why,  he  may  promptly  be  asked,  where  is 
his  Irish  spirit,  and  whether  he  thinks  himself  superior  to 
the  good  old  Irish  rhythms  ?  But  alas  !  we  have  lost  our 
own  language,  and  English  is  not  at  all  the  same  thing  :  we 
can,  and  we  do,  Irishize  it  to  a  great  extent,  as  by  the  use 
of  Gaelic  turns  of  speech ;  and  a  most  beautiful  thing  that 
Irish  English  often  is  from  the  tongues  and  pens  of  our 
orators  and  of  our  writers.  But  there  are  limits  to  our 
possibilities  in  this  direction :  there  are  scarce  any  limits 
to  our  possibilities  in  the  direction  of  introducing  beauties 
and  graces  into  English  verse,  which  in  spirit  and  effect 


J  86  POST  LIMINIUM 

shall  be  truly  Irish.  To  mention  no  living  writers,  Walsh 
and  Callanan,  Sir  Samuel  Ferguson  and  AUingham,  have 
done  so  with  wonderful  felicity  :  and  the  greatest  Young 
Ireland  poets,  whatever  certain  of  their  admirers  may 
think,  were  of  course  admirable  artists,  in  spite  of  that 
passionate  sincerity  and  ardent  purpose  which  some  critics 
hold  incompatible  with  a  deliberate  attention  to  art.  It 
would  be  a  characteristically  Celtic  achievement,  were 
Irish  poets  to  bring  English  verse  to  a  perfection  of  music 
finer  of  its  kind,  in  some  ways,  than  anything  yet  achieved 
in  England  :  as  Mangan  himself  has  done  in  his  poem  of 
unspeakable  beauty  :  the  "  Ode  to  The  Maguire." 

There  is  room  for  all :  that  is  the  sum  and  substance  of 
what  I  have  tried  to  say  :  that,  and  Let  us  bear  with  all, 
encourage  all,  and  do  our  best  to  believe  in  all.  But  I 
never  heard  that  a  difference  of  literary  opinion  was  a 
mortal  sin,  on  one  side  or  the  other.  It  would  be  pleasant 
if  we  could  persuade  ourselves  that  a  man  may  write,  read, 
say,  and  do  all  manner  of  things  uncongenial  to  us,  yet 
have  quite  as  much  patriotism,  and  as  much  Irish  spirit,  and 
as  many  *'  Celtic  notes,"  as  ourselves.  One  would  think, 
to  hear  some  querulous  criticism,  that,  as  a  rule,  the 
ancient  Irish,  our  ancestors,  were  a  desperately  monoto- 
nous race,  all  precisely  similar ;  and  when  we  read  of  their 
conflicts,  we  are  tempted  to  wonder  whether  this  champion 
fought  that  champion  for  lacking  the  Celtic  note,  and  for 
not  being  exactly  like  himself.  They  were  Celtic,  they 
were  the  Gael ;  but  they  must  have  had,  like  every  flourish- 
ing race  under  the  sun,  endless  diversities  of  character, 
though  but  one  spirit.  It  would  be  a  dreary  world  if  we 
were  all  facsimiles  of  each  other.  But  when  we  differ,  let 
us,  if  it  be  possible,  agree  to  differ,  and  not  see  treason 
and  heresy  against  true  patriotism  in  every  deviation  Trom 
our  own  tastes.  Our  ancestors,  in  some  parts,  used  to 
leave  the  right  arms  of  their  sons  unchristened ;  or  rather, 
since  that  is  theologically  meaningless,  they  thought  they 


POETRY   AND    PATRIOTISM    IN    IRELAND  1 87 

could  leave  them  unchristened :  to  the  intent,  as  the 
English  martyr,  Father  Campion,  puts  it,  that  they  "  might 
give  a  more  ungracious  and  deadly  blow."  But  the  right 
arm  armed  with  the  pen  can  be  dangerous ;  and  from  its 
ungracious  and  deadly  blows,  now  and  then,  it  would  seem 
that  the  parents  of  some  of  our  critics  had  successfully 
practised  the  old  superstition.  Righteous  anger  and 
patriotic  indignation  should  be  kept  for  proper  occasions : 
there  are  quite  enough  of  them  without  inventing  more. 
Let  our  poets  take  their  own  way,  and  choose  their  own 
music;  more  than  one  melody  can  be  played  upon  the 
Irish  harp,  and  the  more  the  better.  We  have  but  the 
right  to  ask  them,  that  whatever  they  do,  they  do  it  with 
all  their  might ;  with  all  the  patience,  all  the  passion,  that 
the  thought  of  serving  Ireland  through  song  can  give  them. 
They  are  preparing  the  way  for  the  triumph-song  that  the 
poets  of  a  day  to  come  will  chaunt,  with  every  splendour, 
every  richness,  every  loveliness  and  grace  that  Irish  music 
has  ever  known.  Remember  how  Saint  Patrick  preached 
before  the  high  King  Leaghaire,  and  his  court  at  Tara. 
There  sat  the  great  King,  his  court  and  his  warriors  round 
him,  with  anger  in  their  eyes.  But,  as  Saint  Patrick  spoke, 
a  wonder  happened  :  the  tide  ceased  to  ebb,  the  white  deer 
forgot  to  drink  by  the  river,  the  eagles  hung  poised  in  the 
air,  the  green  leaves  left  off  rustling,  and  a  mystical,  sacred 
silence  fell  upon  Ireland.  We  want  a  silence  to  fall  upon 
Ireland,  a  silence  from  lamentation  and  from  conflict :  and 
then,  in  that  happy  dawn,  the  only  voices  will  be  voices  of 
the  Irish  Muses,  reigning  in  their  old  home ;  and  the 
voices  of  the  Irish  people,  speaking  peace  and  goodwill 
through  all  our  loved  and  holy  Ireland. 


iSS 


POST   LIMINIUM 


THE  INIMITABLE  LUCIAN 

[  The  Daily  Chronicle,  February  20,  1900.] 

The  Syrian  Pantagruelist :  so,  in  some  of  his  happiest 
lines,  has  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  described  Lucian  of  Samosata 
by  Euphrates  : — 

"  The  sage  who  laughed  the  world  away, 

Who  mocked  at  gods,  and  men,  and  care, 
More  sweet  of  voice  than  Rabelais, 
And  lighter-hearted  than  Voltaire." 

Yes  :  that  is  a  true  Lucian,  the  man  of  inveterate  laughter 
and  vivid  imagination  and  radiant  style ;  "  the  inimitable 
Lucian,"  as  Gibbon  calls  him,  who  has  been  so  often 
imitated,  and  so  often  in  vain.  It  is  the  Lucian  whose 
best  writings  ripple  and  sparkle  with  an  "  aiierithmon 
(^elasma"  who  has  affinities  with  the  nobler  Erasmus  and 
with  his  late-born  brother  Heine  ;  who  had  a  romantic  soul 
and  an  ironic  brain.  But  there  is  another  Lucian,  and  we 
find  him  in  Colonel  Hime's  most  scholarly  and  interesting 
monograph. 

This  is  Lucian  the  nihilist  of  faith,  the  anarchist  of 
thought ;  "  scoffing  "  Lucian,  as  Burton  loves  to  say ;  the 
Lucian  whom  Bacon  calls  "  perhaps "  a  "  contemplative 
atheist."  It  is  the  Lucian  whose  "  Dialogues  of  the  Dead  " 
amused  the  placid  death-bed  of  Hume,  and  led  him,  as 
Adam  Smith  relates,  to  crack  jokes  upon  Styx  and  Charon. 
Whereat  Wesley's  wrath  was  kindled,  and  from  the  pulpit 
he  thundered  at  the  dead  sceptic  thus  : — 

"  Do  you  now  find  it  a  laughing  matter?  What  think  you  now  of 
Charon  ?  Has  he  ferried  you  over  Styx  ?  At  length  he  has  taught  you 
to  know  a  little  of  your  own  heart !  At  length  you  know  it  is  a  fearful 
thing  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  living  God  !  " 

This  jesting  Lucian  does  not  so  much  as  comprehend 
the  meaning  of  the  words  reverence  and  awe;  he  will 
"  peep  and  botanise  upon  his  mother's  grave  " ;  he  has  no 


THE   INIMITABLE   LUCIAN  189 

reserves  of  silence,  no  secret  sanctities  that  he  respects ;  no 
precept  higher  than  the  Rabelaisian  "  Do  as  you  please." 
He  lightly  lashes  the  ignoble  and  exposes  the  absurd ;  but 
his  sense  of  humour  is  solely  responsible  for  that,  and  he 
has  no  moral  indignation.  His  deepest  sentiments  are  his 
impatience  of  imposture  and  hypocrisy  ;  and  his  feelings  of 
the  nothingness  in  things,  the  shadow  of  death  upon  life, 
the  overwhelming  reality  of  the  grave.  Before  *'  commenc- 
ing satirist,"  he  had  gone  the  round,  none  too  methodically, 
of  the  philosophies,  and  looked,  none  too  carefully,  at 
the  religions ;  he  found  everywhere  vanity  and  vexation, 
impossibility  and  pretence.  And  his  conclusion  was  much 
that  of  his  admirer  Hume.  That  amiable  infidel,  when  the 
eternal  questions  pressed  him  hard  and  molested  his 
equanimity,  had  the  following  lofty  consolations  : — 

"  Most  fortunate  it  happens,  that  since  reason  is  incapable  01 
dispelling  those  clouds,  nature  herself  suffices  to  that  purpose,  and  cures 
me  of  this  philosophical  melancholy  and  delirium  either  by  relaxing 
this  bent  of  mind,  or  by  some  avocation  and  lively  impression  of  my 
senses,  which  obliterate  all  these  chimeras.  I  dine,  I  play  a  game  of 
backgammon,  I  converse,  and  am  merry  with  my  friends ;  and  when 
after  three  or  four  hours'  amusement  I  would  return  to  these  speculations, 
they  appear  so  cold  and  strained  and  ridiculous,  that  I  cannot  find  in 
my  heart  to  enter  into  them  any  farther.  Here,  then,  I  find  myself 
absolutely  and  necessarily  determined  to  live,  and  talk,  and  act  like 
other  people  in  the  common  affairs  of  life." 

Now,  the  second  century  after  Christ,  notwithstanding 
that  it  embraces  the  vaunted  Age  of  the  Antonines,  was  not 
distinguished  by  elevation  of  pagan  thought,  pagan  faith,  or 
pagan  practice ;  and  Lucian,  the  self-naturaiised  Greek 
with  an  Asiatic  temperament,  was  not  the  man  to  discern 
its  nobler  aspects.  He  encountered  Christianity,  and, 
though  really  complimenting,  meant  to  travesty  it ;  little 
wonder  that  the  pompous  assumptions  of  pagan  philosophy, 
the  decadent  superstitions  of  pagan  religion,  found  no  mercy 
at  his  hands  !  Your  Grceailus  p  kilo  sop  hicus  had  long  been 
an   Egyptian   plague  upon   the   civilised   world.      In   the 


190  POST   LIMINIUM 

previous  century,  so  Philostratus  writes,  the  Indian  King 
Phraotes  remarked  to  Apollonius  of  Tyana — if  that  amusing 
person  be  not  mythical^ — that  in  old  time  the  obvious  ques- 
tion first  put  to  a  stranger  was  :  "  Are  you  a  pirate  ?  "  Now, 
with  Greeks  at  least,  it  was :  "  Are  you  a  philosopher  ?  " 
And  the  necromancer,  the  soothsayer,  the  "  spiritualist," 
were  ubiquitous.  Lucian,  shallow  as  he  was  ("  all  shallows 
are  clear,"  said  Johnson  of  Hume),  was  briskly  logical  and 
of  a  sprightly  common-sense;  the  arrant  humbug  or 
solemn  ass  had  no  chance  with  him. 

With  this,  the  caustically  destructive  work  of  Lucian,  wc 
have  no  quarrel :  with  human  folly,  war  to  the  knife,  if  you 
will !  But  one  thought  must  occur  to  the  readers  of  Lucian  : 
he  had  for  years,  as  liege  lord,  another  Greek  writer,  the 
Emperor  Marcus  Aurelius.  That  Stoic  saint  wrote  Greek 
as  gracelessly  as  Lucian  wrote  it  gracefully;  it  was  the 
native  tongue  of  neither.  But  the  Emperor,  Plato's 
philosopher  in  the  purple,  lived  his  austere  faith  faithfully ; 
whilst  Lucian  "  mocked  at  gods,  and  men,  and  care."  We 
laugh  with  him  ;  we  praise  his  exposure  of  the  rottenness 
and  sham  and  ludicrousness  in  the  various  life  of  his 
times ;  we  love  his  spirit  of  romantic  invention  ;  we  linger 
gladly  in  his  Isles  of  the  Blessed ;  we  take  sides  with  his 
Men  of  the  Moon  on  Men  of  the  Sun ;  we  object,  or  do  not 
object,  to  annexing  and  colonising  the  Morning  Star ;  but 
we  have  no  room  in  our  hearts  for  the  man  who,  after 
degrading  Homer,  and  blaspheming  Socrates,  and  making 
a  mocking  show  of  "  whatever  gods  may  be,"  thrusts  in 
our  faces  a  grinning  skull ;  as  much  as  to  say  :  "  That  will  be 
the  end  of  you  !  Make  the  best  of  life  while  you  have  it." 
If  only  his  own  heart  had  felt  the  sceva  indigjiatio  which 
"lacerated"  Swift's;  if  only  he  had  lain  upon  the  "mattress 
grave "  of  Heine  !  Then,  we  could  pardon  his  elegant 
pessimism. 

But  the  prosperous  provincial,  so  it  seems,  had  no 
sorrows ;  and  such  a  man,  however  delightful,  is  an  essential 


THE   INIMITABLE   LUCIAN  I9I 

trifler.  A  great  writer,  who,  but  for  a  certain  somewhat 
nauseous  unction,  is  very  like  Lucian,  has  called  him  "  the 
first  apparition  of  that  form  of  human  genius  whereof 
Voltaire  is  the  complete  incarnation."  Renan  has  said  it ; 
and  he  is  an  admirable  judge.  Mr.  Pater,  who  so  cunningly 
built  into  the  structure  of  his  "  Marius "  what  is  perhaps 
the  most  impressive  of  Lucian's  semi-serious  works,  the 
"  Hermotimus,"  speaks  of  his  ''  elegant  and  self-complacent, 
but  far  from  unamiable  scepticism.  .  .  ."  Just  so ;  and  as 
Newman,  in  a  famous  utterance,  told  the  University  of 
Oxford  that  he  wished  religion  in  England  were  more  rigid, 
gloomy,  piercing,  even  superstitious,  so  at  least  it  ceased  to 
be  so  easy-going,  light,  unthinking,  superficial ;  in  the  same 
way  we  resent  the  facial  agnosticism  of  our  pleasant  Lucian. 
True,  the  imperishable  Plato  himself,  with  other  philosophers 
of  less  note,  had  abhorred  and  denounced  the  dishonouring 
legends  of  their  Pantheon  :  true  again,  that  many  of  the 
Christian  Fathers  and  apologists  loved  to  pour  scathing 
scorn  upon  them.  But  all  these  had  a  substitute  for  what 
they  destroyed.  Lucian  tumbles  the  gods  from  their 
thrones,  jeers  sweetly  at  their  preposterous  appearance, 
draws  his  official  salary,  and  retires  chuckling.  If  he  have 
anything  to  say,  it  is  the  Lucretian  Quantum  est  m  rebus  inane! 
Doubtless  we  cannot  blame  him  for  his  seeming  in- 
difference to  the  everlasting  problems  of  humanity.  The 
man  was  strangely  made  so.  But  we  are  equally  unable  to 
love  him,  as  we  love  Cervantes  and  Montaigne,  Browne  and 
Lamb.  He  feasts  us  bravely,  but  he  puts  the  festival 
skeleton  too  near  us  :  his  dance-music  turns  to  a  death- 
march.  The  "  Dialogues  of  the  Dead,"  which,  for  some 
inscrutable  reason,  are  the  most  lamiliar  of  his  writings,  are 
dolorously  humorous.  Consider  but  one,  in  a  poor  epitome. 
Scene,  Hades.     Speakers,  Menippus  and  Hermes. 

Menippus  :  Where,  Hermes,  are  the  gallants  and  fair  dames  ?    I 
am  a  newcomer  :  tell  me. 

Hkrmes  :  I  am  not  at  leisure  :    but  look  on  your  right.     There  are 


192  POST    LIMINIUM 

Ilyacinlli,  and  >i'arcisi,us,  and  Nireus,  and  Achilles,  and  Tyro,  and 
Helen  ;  in  short,  all  the  beauty  of  old  time. 

Menippus  :  I  see  but  bones  and  fleshless  skulls. 

Hermes  :  And  these  bones,  which  you  seem  to  despise,  are  what  the 
poets  marvel  at. 

Menippus  :  Show  me  Helen. 

Hermes  :  This  skull  is  Helen. 

Menippus  :  Was  it  this  that  filled  a  thousand  ships,  and  overthrew 
so  many  cities  ? 

Hermes  :  You  never  saw  her  living,  Menippus  !  or  you  would  have 
known  what  it  was  "  for  such  a  lady  to  endure  such  toils."  Withered 
flowers,  colourless  and  misshapen,  they  are  nothing  to  you.  But,  in 
their  bloom,  they  were  very  beautiful. 

Menippus  :  But  the  Greeks,  Hermes  :  they  fought  for  a  thing  of  a 
minute,  so  soon  to  fade  ! 

Hermes  :  I  have  no  time,  Menippus,  to  philosophise  with  you.  Lay 
yourself  down  where  you  please  :  I  have  other  dead  to  bring  across. 

An  excellent  grimness,  surely,  in  this  mingled  anticipation 
of  Faustus  and  Hamlet ;  a  savoury  cynicism ;  a  choice 
laugh  at  poor,  heroic,  foolish  humanity.  "  I  should  burst 
out  laughing  at  you,"  says  a  dead  youth  to  his  mourning 
folk  and  friends,  "  but  for  this  dreadful  thing  you've  tied 
round  my  chin."  Well  may  one  of  the  most  eminent 
among  American  scholars,  who  has  written  upon  Lucian 
with  an  appropriate  air  of  cultured  levity,  declare  that  "  of 
all  sad  writers  the  jester  Lucian  is  to  us  the  saddest :  sadder 
even  than  the  elder  Pliny,  in  his  blank  despair."  He  is 
the  priest  and  prophet  of  immitigable,  perdurable  death ; 
amid  the  dust  and  ashes  of  his  thought  you  shall  search  in 
vain  for  any  human  hope. 

We  cannot  make  friends  with  this  man  of  mockeries. 
Mr.  Lang  can ;  he  addresses  him,  much  as  Wordsworth 
invoked  Milton,  with  a  "  Lucian  !  thou  should'st  be  living 
at  this  hour  ;  the  world  hath  need  of  thee."  But  we  think 
that  Colonel  Hime  writes  with  a  deeper  insight  upon  this 
Lucian  of  "  the  many  laughters."  In  his  hundred  pages  he 
does  justice  to  the  bright  phantasy,  the  swift,  keen  irony  and 
wit  of  this  unique  writer  of  old  time  ;  but  we  are  too  often 


LORD    BYRON  I93 

compelled  to  say  with  him :  "  This  is  awful  mirth  to  our 
ears."  To  tilt  at  superstition,  to  shoot  at  folly,  is  seldom 
a  grateful  or  a  gratifying  pursuit,  if  there  be  no  depth  of 
purpose  in  it,  nothing  but  pleasure  in  the  consciousness  of 
destructive  power,  no  feeling  of  sympathetic  pity,  no  tender- 
ness somewhere  in  the  heart,  no  cordiality  sweetening  the 
work  of  overthrow. 

Lucretius,  by  far  the  most  terrible  and  prostrating  of 
ancient  writers,  is  more  humanly  companionable  than  the 
corruscating  scoffer.  Or,  again,  it  is  not  possible  to  read 
Don  Qidxote  without  the  profoundest  emotion  of  reverence 
and  compassion,  mingling  with  the  constant  laughter ; 
Lucian  is  soulless,  glittering  without,  ashen  within.  A 
French  priest  and  writer  of  pettsees  has  said  that,  since 
Voltaire,  the  world  no  longer  laughs  :  it  grins.  It  may 
seem  a  harsh  thing  to  say  of  Lucian  the  witty,  the  elegant, 
the  debonair ;  but  there  is  no  humanity  in  his  laugh,  his 
smile  is  a  grin  at  an  empty  universe  essentially  absurd,  if 
capable  of  being  enjoyed.  Colonel  Hime  is  sternly  and 
strictly  in  the  right.  Lucian  is  delightful,  but  not  lovable  ; 
admirable,  but  not  honourable.  Still,  if  there  be  readers 
who  can  make  honestly  merry  over  the  gospel  of  To7it 
lasse,  tout  cassc,  totit passe,  we  commend  them  to  Lucian  of 
Samosata.  But  Steele  and  Lamb  are  much  more  wholesome, 
and  we  prefer  the  qiie  sfais-Je  of  Montaigne. 


LORD   BYRON 

[The  Academy,  May  7,  1898.] 
The  Byron  of  tradition  is  a  fascinating  figure.  He  flashes 
through  his  brief  life  with  a  disastrous  glory ;  he  is  passion 
incarnate ;  he  is  a  noble,  a  man  of  ancient  and  illustrious 
descent,  and  he  flings  poems  broadcast  in  a  golden  lar- 
gesse ;  he  is  the  Napoleon  of  passion  and  of  poetry,  adored, 
dreaded,  reviled,  extolled;  he  is  an  Apollo- Apollyon, beautiful 


194  POST   LIMINIUM 

and  Satanic  j  he  is  the  spirit  of  revolt,  freedom,  unfettered 
manhood ;  like  Browning's  Ottima,  he  is  "  magnificent  in 
sin  "  ;  he  is  Milton's  ruined  archangel,  fallen  from  Heaven, 
and  keeping  something  of  his  pristine  splendour ;  he  is  the 
man  of  inevitable  genius,  who  loves  to  be  himself,  and  to 
mock  into  oblivion  and  contempt  all  spurious  and  puling 
respectability ;  he  is  the  Titan,  the  Prometheus,  who  filches 
fire  from  Heaven  or  from  Hell ;  Europe  is  aghast  at  him, 
and  he  dies  heroically  at  Missolonghi.  And  "  Byronism  " 
becomes  a  contagion  :  from  Moscow  to  Madrid,  whole 
armies  of  young  men  fall  to  drinking  out  of  skulls,  to 
writing  cut-throat  or  indecent  tragedies,  to  loving  Alps  and 
ruins  and  bandits  and  the  East  and  the  Middle  Age  and 
their  neighbours'  wives.  He  is  a  portent  and  an  epoch :  the 
Revolution  was  one  mighty  thing,  and  the  existence  of 
"  Milor  "  Byron  was  another.  "  That  pale  face  is  my  fate," 
said  an  unhappy  girl,  upon  catching  sight  of  Byron  :  "  that 
pale  face  "  possessed,  obsessed  all  Europe.  It  lengthened 
the  hair  and  shortened  the  collar :  it  created  "  Byronism," 
and  enriched  all  civilized  tongues  with  the  epithet 
"  Byronic."  A  beautiful  devil  of  supreme  genius, — that  is 
the  Byron  of  tradition.  Supremacy  in  genius,  vice,  per- 
sonality,— they  are  all  ascribed  to  the  Byron  of  tradition. 
Infamous,  perhaps :  but,  what  a  poet,  what  a  man  ! 

So  much  for  the  Byron  of  tradition.  And  the  Byron  of 
fact  ?  "  Well,"  said  Mr.  Stevenson's  Attwater  to  Captain 
Davis,  "  you  seem  to  me  to  be  a  very  twopenny  pirate  ! " 
And  to  me,  Byron  with  all  his  pretensions  and  his  fame 
seems  a  very  twopenny  poet  and  a  farthing  man.  "He 
had  the  misfortune,"  writes  Mr.  Symonds,  "  to  be  well-born 
and  ill-bred,"  a  most  deplorable  combination  !  His  letters 
alone  reveal  the  man ;  a  man  of  malignant  dishonour  and 
declamatory  affectation,  and  poetising  conceit ;  a  man  who 
could  not  even  act  upon  Luther's  advice  and  "  sin  boldly," 
but  must  needs  advertise  his  silly  obscenities.  Despicable, 
that  is  the  word  for  him  :  and  it  is  no  Philistine  Puritanism 


LORD  BYRON  I 95 

that  so  speaks.  The  vulgar  aristocrat,  the  insolent  plebeian, 
that  Byron  was,  looks  ludicrous  by  the  side  of  his  great  con- 
temporaries. Wordsworth,  so  impassioned,  awful,  and 
august ;  Shelley  and  Keats ;  Lamb,  the  well-beloved,  that 
tragic  and  smiling  patient ;  miraculous  Coleridge ;  Landor, 
with  his  gracious  courtesy  and  Roman  wrath  ; — how  does 
Byron  show  by  these  ?  He  did  one  thing  well :  he  rid  the 
world  of  a  cad — by  dying  as  a  soldier.  There  was  a  strain 
of  greatness  in  the  man,  and  it  predominated  at  the  last. 

But  Byron  the  poet  ?  Emphatically,  he  was  not  a  poet ; 
not  if  Shakespeare  and  Milton  are  poets.  He  was  a 
magnificent  satirist:  the  "Vision  of  Judgment,"  "Don 
Juan,"  and  "  Beppo  "  are  very  glories  of  wit,  indignation, 
rhetoric ;  accomplished  to  the  uttermost,  marvellous  and 
immortal ;  filled  with  scathing  laughter,  rich  with  a  prodigal 
profusion  of  audacious  fancy  and  a  riot  of  rhyme.  Here  the 
man  is  himself,  eloquent  and  vehement  of  speech,  alive  and 
afire.  No  coarseness,  cruelty,  insolence,  can  blind  us  to 
the  enduring  excellence  of  these  writings,  to  their  virility 
and  strength.  This  Byron  is  deathless.  But  the  Byron  of 
love-lyrics,  and  tragedies,  and  romantic  tales,  is  a  poet  of 
infinite  tediousness  in  execrable  verse ;  in  the  severely 
courteous  French  phrase,  he  "  does  not  permit  himself  to 
be  read."  And  he  is  not  read  :  no  one  now  reads  "  Lara," 
or  "  Parisina,"  or  "  The  Corsair,"  or  "  The  Giaour,"  or 
"  The  Bride  of  Abydos,"  or  "  The  Siege  of  Corinth,"  or 
"  The  Island,"  or  the  weary,  weary  plays.  They  are  dead, 
and  past  resurrection ;  their  passion  is  as  poor  and  tawdry 
a  thing  as  that  of  Frankenstem,  or  The  Alysteries  of  Udolpho ; 
their  garish  theatricality  is  laughable,  and  we  can  scarce 
believe  that  these  things  of  naught  were  once  preferred  to 
the  noble  simplicities  and  rough,  true  music  of  Scott.  Among 
the  poems  of  farewell,  regret,  despair,  is  there  one,  except, 
it  may  be,  "  When  we  two  parted,"  that  can  be  read  with 
more  than  a  mild  and  languid  pleasure  ?  In  all  the  moral- 
isings   and    meanderings    and    maunderings    of  "  Childe 


,f)6  I^OST    LIMINIUM 

Harold,"  is  there  anything  better  than  a  few  bursts  or 
soiniding  rhetoric  and  impressive  declamation,  superbly  and 
masterfully  trivial?  Dulness  is  the  word,  dulness  unspeak- 
able. Outside  his  own  royal  province  of  satire,  he  created 
nothing  of  power,  nothing  but  frantic  efforts  to  be  powerful ; 
and  he  turned  the  lovely  speech  of  English  poetry  into  a 
hideous  noise.  Coleridge,  master  of  music,  says  of  him  : 
"  It  seems  to  my  ear,  that  there  is  a  sad  want  of  harmony 
in  Lord  Byron's  verses " ;  and  again  :  "  How  lamentably 
the  art  of  versification  is  neglected  by  most  of  the  poets  of 
the  present  day  !  By  Lord  Byron,  as  it  strikes  me,  in  par- 
ticular." In  our  times,  Mr.  Swinburne,  to  whom  none  will 
deny  a  mastery  of  his  craft,  has  poured  upon  Byron's  in- 
harmonies  the  contempt,  not  of  parody, — that  were  impos- 
giljle  — but  of  faithful  imitation.  Consider  an  average 
example  of  his  rhythm  from  "  Cain  "  : — 

"  Oh,  ihou  beautiful 
And  unimaginable  other  !  ami 
Vc  multiplying  masses  of  increased 
And  still  increasing  lights  !     NYhat  are  ye?     What 
Is  this  blue  wilderness  of  interniinable 
Air,  where  ye  roll  along,  as  1  have  seen 
The  leaves  along  the  limpid  streams  of  Kden  ? 
Is  your  course  measured  for  ye  ?     Or  do  ye 
Sweep  on  in  your  unbounded  revelry 
Through  an  aerial  universe  of  entlless 
l'"xix\nsion — at  which  my  soul  aches  to  think — 
Intoxicated  with  eternity  ? 
O  God  !  O  Gods  !  or  whatso'er  ye  are, 
How  beautiful  ye  are  !  how  beautiful 
Your  works,  or  accidents,  or  whatso'er 
They  may  be  !     Let  me  die,  as  atoms  die 
(If  tlial  they  die),  or  know  ye  in  your  might 
And  knowledge  !     ISly  thoughts  are  not  in  ihis  hour 
Unworthy  what  I  see,  though  my  dust  is. 
Spirit !  let  me  expire,  or  see  them  nearer." 

Musicnl,    is    it   not?     Let   us   try  again;   a  passage   from 
"  Sardanapalus  " : 


LORD   BYRON  Kj-] 

"Yon  disk, 
To  the  star-read  Chaldean,  bears  upon 
Its  everlasting  page  the  end  of  what 
Seemed  everlasting  I     But  oh  !  thou  true  sun, 
The  burning  oracle  of  all  that  live, 
As  fountain  of  all  life,  and  symbol  of 
Him  who  bestows  it,  wherefore  dost  ihou  limit 
Thy  love  unto  calamity  ?     Why  not 
Unfold  the  rise  of  days  more  worthy  thine 
All-glorious  burst  from  ocean  ?     Why  not  dart 
A  beam  of  hope  athwart  the  future  years. 
As  of  wrath  to  its  days  !     Hear  me  !  oh,  hear  me  !  " 

Such  is  Byron's  "mighty  line":  this  horrid  dissonance, 
this  gasping  and  croaking,  is  the  breath  of  his  fiery  spirit 
expressing  itself  in  poetry  and  passion.  "  Moore,"  said  Sir 
Henry  Taylor,  "  makes  Byron  as  interesting  as  one  whose 
nature  was  essentially  ignoble  can  be."  And  "essentially 
ignoble  "  is  the  very  term  for  Byron's  verse ;  it  lacks  every 
fine  quality,  from  the  majesty  of  Milton  to  the  polish  of 
Pope.  Many  a  poet  whose  matter  is  tedious  and  outworn 
can  be  read  for  the  redeeming  excellence  of  his  manner ; 
Byron  is  not  of  these. 

But  Byron  was  accepted  abroad :  he  enfranchised  English 
literature,  he  was  the  genius  of  English  poetry  incarnate 
before  the  eyes  of  Europe,  he  moved  the  aged  Goethe  and 
the  youthful  Hugo.  Why  ?  Surely  for  a  simple  reason ; 
Byron  is  very  easy  to  understand.  He  deals  rhetorically 
with  elemental  emotions,  and  he  enjoyed  the  fame  of  being 
"  at  war  with  society  "  :  an  aristocrat  in  exile,  a  champion 
of  the  peoples.  Now,  rhetoric  and  oratory  and  eloquence 
make  a  wide  appeal ;  they  are  seldom  subtle,  but  they 
address  themselves  with  pungent  and  poignant  vigour  to 
the  simple  feelings  of  men.  "  Give  me  liberty  or  give  me 
death  ! " — that  is  the  kind  of  thing ;  a  sonorous  and  im- 
passioned commonplace,  fiung  out  upon  the  air  to  thrill  the 
hearts  of  thousands.  Byron's  best  verse  has  this  quality  : 
he  possessed  the  imagination  of  the  orator,  the  faculty  of 


198  POST   LIMINIUM 

finding  large  and  bold  phrases.  Stanza  upon  stanza  of 
"  Childe  Harold "  reads  like  the  finest  things  in  Irish  or 
American  oratory,  grandiose  and  sweeping.  "  Roll  on, 
thou  deep  and  dark-blue  ocean^  roll ! "  You  can  see  the 
outstretched  arm,  hear  the  resonant  voice,  of  Byron  the 
declaimer ;  and  the  effect  upon  ears  unversed  in  the  niceties 
and  delicacies  of  English  poetry  was  prodigious.  The 
blaring  magniloquence  of  Lucan  has  certain  attractions  not 
possessed  by  the  majestic,  melancholy,  subtle  Virgilian 
lines;  and  Byron  was  much  of  a  Lucan.  "The  Isles  of 
Greece,"  and  the  "  Ode  to  Napoleon,"  and  "  Lines  on 
Completing  My  Thirty-sixth  Year," — emphatic,  strenuous, 
impressive, — have  the  true  oratorical  note  and  ring  : 

"  The  sword,  the  banner,  and  the  field, 
Glory  and  Greece,  around  me  see  ! 
The  Spartan,  borne  upon  his  shield. 
Was  not  more  free." 

There  is  a  trumpet-call  in  that ;  but  for  greatness  of 
beauty  we  turn  from  it  to.the  last  chorus  of  Shelley's  "  Hellas," 
and  hear  a  music  of  the  morning  stars.  Byron  could  shout 
magnificently,  laugh  splendidly,  thunder  tumultuously ;  but 
he  could  not  sing.  There  was  something  in  him  of  Achilles, 
nothing  whatever  of  Apollo.  Think  only  of  these  mighty 
masters  of  passion,  ^schylus,  Lucretius,  Dante,  Milton, 
Hugo ;  what  sweetness  proceeding  from  what  strength ! 
They  are  filled  with  a  lyrical  loveliness,  the  very  magic  of 
music,  the  beauty  almost  unbearable.  By  the  side  of  these 
Byron  is  but  a  brazen  noise.  His  sczva  mdigtmtio  becomes 
a  mere  petulance  of  arrogance  when  we  think  of  Dante  ; 
one  line  of  Milton  rebukes  his  haste  of  speed.  He  took 
Europe  by  storm  ;  but  a  far  more  impassioned  figure  is  that 
of  Wordsworth,  with  his  whole  being,  body  and  soul,  shaken 
by  the  "  divine  madness  "  of  inspiration^  by  converse  with 
eternity,  by  commune  with  "  the  most  ancient  heavens." 
There  was  the  true  passion,  not  in  Byron,  hurriedly  throwing 


LORD   BYRON  I99 

off  a  few  hundred  lines  of  romantic  rant  after  coming  home 
from  some  silly  dissipation.  He  has  no  trace  of  the  poet 
consecrate,  such  as  marks  many  a  nameless  balladist.  Who 
would  not  have  written  "  Helen  of  Kirkconnel,"  so  fierce 
and  loving,  desolate  and  defiant,  a  cry  imperishable  and 
perfect,  than  all  the  famed  rigmarole  of  rhetoric  called 
"  Childe  Harold  "  ?  In  that  long  and  elaborate  work  there 
are  precisely  two  lines  of  pure  poetry,  the  lines  on  the 
Dying  Gladiator : 

"  He  heard  it,  but  he  heeded  not :  his  eyes 
Were  with  his  heart,  and  that  was  far  away." 

That,  and  perhaps  a  score  of  other  lines  in  Byron,  have  an 
enduring  freshness  and  fragrance  of  thought  and  v/ord. 
For  the  rest,  he  was  pleased  in  poetry,  as  in  life, 
to  "  cut  a  dash,"  with  the  result  that  both  his  verse  and 
himself  are  sorrily  discredited  :  things,  as  George  Borrow 
has  it,  of  "  mouthings  and  coxcombry."  Landor,  in  stately 
Latin,  once  exhorted  him  to  amend  his  morals  and  his 
style.  He  did  neither,  and  his  style  remained  even  more 
detestable  than  his  morals.  When  Tennyson  heard  of 
Byron's  death,  he  went  out  upon  the  seashore  and  wrote 
upon  the  sand  the  words  :  "  Byron  is  dead  ! "  Seas  of 
oblivion  have  swept  over  Byron,  and  washed  away  his 
fame,  as  the  sea  washed  away  those  words.  It  may  be 
that  his  most  celebrated  passage  will  be  remembered  only 
by  the  scornful  ridicule  of  Browning.  The  poets  whom  he 
insulted  or  patronised,  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  and 
Shelley  and  Keats,  have  long  since  taken  their  starry 
stations  in  altitudes  beyond  sight  of  him,  and  Byron,  "  The 
Claimant"  of  English  poetry,  has  been  found  out.  He 
retains  but  one  glory  :  his  gift  of  wit  and  satire,  his  superb 
recklessness  of  mocking  phrase  and  rhyme.  There,  all 
that  was  potent  and  sincere  in  him  became  triumphant, 
and  the  writer  of  "  Don  Juan  "  is  a  deathless  delight.  But 
the  "  poet  of  passion  "  is  dead.     Peacock  killed  him  long 


200  POST   LIMINIUM 

ago  in  "Nightmare  Abbey."  His  wailings  and  bowlings 
wring  no  man's  heart,  stir  no  man's  pulses;  we  no  longer 
believe  in  the  Byron  of  dazzling  devilry  and  burning  poetry^ 
volcanic  and  voluptuous.  In  place  of  him  we  contemplate 
an  ill-mannered  and  cross-grained  fellow,  charlatan  and 
genius,  whose  voluminous  writings  are  mostly  dull  and 
mostly  ill-written;  gone  for  ever,  that  Byron  of  the  fatal 
fascination,  the  passionate  and  patrician  glory,  whose  freaks 
and  whimsies  threw  Europe  into  fits,  whose  poems  revealed 
to  the  universe  the  fact  that  Shakespeare's  England  had  at 
last  produced  a  poet !  If  he  could  be  resuscitated,  Mr. 
Murray  as  publisher,  and  Mr.  Coleridge  as  editor,  are  the 
men  to  accomplish  that  miracle.  But,  as  Mr.  Matthew 
Arnold  loved  to  inform  us,  "  miracles  do  not  happen." 
Byron  the  wit  is  alive  for  evermore ;  Byron  the  poet  of 
passion  and  imagination  will  never  rise  from  the  dead. 


O   RARE  GEORGE   BORROW! 

\The  Outlook,  April  ist,  1899.] 
You  may  prefer  Popish  priests  to  Protestant  pugilists ; 
you  may  loathe  philology  and  ale  ;  you  may  feel  for  the 
tragic  house  of  Stuart ;  you  may  take  no  personal  interest 
in  East  Anglia,  Wales,  or  Spain,  and  but  little  in  gypsies : 
yet,  if  by  natural  grace  you  have  it  in  you  to  love  Borrow's 
genius,  you  can  forgive  him  all.  By  natural  grace,  I  say : 
for  if  you  come  fresh  to  Borrow,  as  to  a  writer  whom,  you 
"  ought  to  know,"  and  find  his  charm  hard  of  access, 
difficult  of  approach,  you  will  never  reach  it;  you  will 
think  him  an  over-praised  eccentric.  But  they,  to  whom 
life,  in  the  natural  order,  can  give  nothing  better  than  to 
walk  alone  in  "  the  wind  on  the  heath,"  and  to  lie  out  on 
the  hillside  under  the  stars ;  to  know  that  strange  false 
dawn  whereat  all  nature  wakes,  and  turns  to  sleep  again ; 
to  go  on  their  rejoicing  way  at  sunrise,  loving  their  fre 


O  RARE  GEORGE  BORROW  !  20I 

solitariness  : — these  are  the  born  Borrovians.  The  appeal 
is  elemental,  primceval;  to  the  savage  in  the  blood,  the 
ancestral  nomad :  wonderful  as  they  are,  not  Borrow's 
dealings  with  men,  not  his  trafficking  vnth  Spanish  posadas 
and  Welsh  cottages  and  gypsy  camps,  not  his  converse 
with  his  kind  in  town  or  country,  but  his  intercourse  and 
converse  with  Nature  at  her  untameable  wildest,  mark  what 
is  deepest  in  his  heart,  most  leaping  in  his  pulses.  It 
is  the  voice  of  Jasper  Petulengro,  but  the  soul  of  George 
Borrow,  which  praises  in  a  famous  dialogue  the  simple 
majesties  of  the  means  of  natural  joy  in  living.  "  '  Life  is 
sweet,  brother.'  '  Do  you  think  so  ? '  '  Think  so  ! — there's 
night  and  day,  brother,  both  sweet  things;  sun,  moon, 
and  stars,  brother,  all  sweet  things;  there's  likewise  a 
wind  on  the  heath.  Life  is  very  sweet,  brother;  who 
would  wish  to  die ? '  .  .  .  'In  sickness,  Jasper ? '  ' There's 
the  sun  and  stars,  brother.'  '  In  blindness,  Jasper  ? ' 
'There's  the  wind  on  the  heath,  brother.'  .  .  ."  Does 
not  that  send  the  blood  glowing  through  the  veins  to  read  ? 
And  that  is  the  finer  spirit  of  the  four  masterpieces ;  The 
Bible  in  Spain  ^  Lavejigj-o^  The  jRofnafiy  Jiye,  Wild  Wales ; 
to  read  which  is  to  wash  soul  and  body  in  the  open  air,  to 
be  purified  from  the  stains  of  civilization,  to  meet  and  greet 
the  Mighty  Mother.  O  rare  George  Borrow  !  Yet  readers 
new  to  Borrow  might  well  say  to  him  what  Plato  would 
have  had  his  ideal  citizens  say  to  the  poet :  "  You  are  a 
very  wonderful,  and  accomplished,  and  extraordinary 
person  ;  but  we  don't  think  we  want  any  more  of  you." 

....  Six  foot  three,  a  mighty  walker  and  rider,  a  vigorous 
eater  and  drinker;  of  stout  and  valiant  fists,  a  "good 
hater  "  and  a  plain-spoken ;  a  lover  of  rude  livers  and  wild 
adventures ;  master  of  a  style  that  moves  and  breathes,  a 
man  arrogant  and  chivalrous  and  masculine; — such  is 
"Don  Jorge"  of  Spain,  the  "Romany  Rye"  of  English 
waysides  and  heaths  and  dingles.  A  very  Tristram,  child  of 
sorrow ;  a  man  a  prey  to  "  the  Fear,"  a  man  of  causeless 


202  POST  LIMINIUM 

melancholy ;  shy,  uncertain,  solitary,  superstitious ;  with  the 
Mezzofantian  gift  of  tongues,  and   a   passion   for  literary 
triumph ;    shrinking  from  men  of  letters,  and  jealous  of 
them ;  a  willing  pupil  of  the  obscure  and  the  eccentric  and 
the  despised :  that  is  the  Distributor  of  the  Scriptures  for 
the   Bible   Society  in    Russia   and   Spain,   who   execrated 
Rome,  extolled  Canterbury,  and  had,  after  all,  a  faith  and 
a  doubt  of  his  own.     A  master  of  pathos,  of  humour,  of 
truest  realism,  yet  less  of  romantic  passion  than  of  a  most 
intense  personal  absorption  in  himself,  as  a  man  in  a  world 
of  wonder ;  one  who  paraded  a  robust  common-sense,  but 
whom  the  conventional  repelled,  the  remote  and  mysterious 
attracted.     A  strange  nature  of  a  man !  as  Mr.  Stevenson 
would  say ;  but  a  sincere  nature,  and  a  man,  if  unlike  his 
fellows,  then  born  to  the  unlikeness,  and  incapable  of  con- 
formity.    The   prince   of   innocent   egoists   and   childlike 
braggarts,  who  to   the   last  could  contemplate  his  secret 
soul  with  a  marvelling  concern,  as  though   from  without, 
and  describe  his  bursts  of  tears  not  less  vividly  than  his 
draughts  of  ale.     He  imagined  nothing ;  but  what  he  saw, 
did,  said,  or  heard,  that  he  embellished, — not  by  adding 
embroideries,  but  by  curtailing  superfluities,  and  leaving  a 
clean,  clear,  and  instantly  arresting  outline.     And  he  took 
pains  to  avoid  dulness ;  do  he  but  ask  his  way  of  a  tinker, 
or  order  his  meal  at  an  inn,  or  set  to  upon  learning  Irish, 
he  will  take  care  that  the  event  shall  be  emphatic,  a  matter 
of  pointed  interest.      Uncongenial  critics  have  cried  out 
upon  this,  not  understanding  it;  they  have  either  failed 
to  note  the  elasticity  and  terseness  of  the  realism,  or  they 
have  paid  it  an  unconscious  compliment.     His  "  Bible  in 
Spain"  is  the  most  marked  example  of  his  manner.     His 
other   masterpieces    are   frankly   personal ;    but    there   he 
chronicles  a  public  mission,  and  his  title  indicates  it.     Yet 
his   readers  observe  (and   some  of  them  with  a   peculiar 
amusement),  that  the   Bible  is  far  less  the  book's  theme 
than  are  Borrow  and  his  night-rides,  and  his  remarkable 


O  RARE  GEORGE  BORROW!  203 

servants,  and  his  food  and  his  gypsies,  and  himself  and 
his,  in  general  and  at  large.  George  Borrow  is  always  his 
own  protagonist,  be  it  the  Borrow  knowing  in  beer  and 
horseflesh,  or  the  Borrow  charging  the  Pope  full  tilt,  or 
the  Borrow  helpless  and  agonising  in  the  hold  of  the 
mysterious  "Fear":  (Borrow  of  the  gemiti^  sospiri,  cd  alti 
guai. 

....  All  his  books  are  in  great  measure  autobiographical ; 
all,  therefore,  records  of  wanderings,  even  from  infancy ; 
all  are  written  in  an  English  which  attains  its  dramatic 
end  with  an  amazing  certainty  and  success.  It  is  an  un- 
erring combination  of  the  homely  and  the  eloquent,  the 
homespun  and  the  high-wrought ;  the  words  are  living 
creatures.  Mr.  Meredith,  Mr.  Pater,  Mr.  Stevenson  grew 
into  their  styles,  finding  their  way.  Borrow  seems  to  have 
come  into  the  world  with  his  proper  gift  of  style,  so  in- 
dissolubly  wedded  to  his  nature,  so  inseparable  from  his 
themes.  These  goodly  books  are  among  the  most  way- 
ward ever  written.  You  cannot  answer  a  curious  friend 
who  asks :  "  What  is  Lavengro  about  ? "  You  can  but 
say :  "  Gypsies,  and  obscure  languages,  and  London  pub- 
lishers, and  tinkers,  and  mad  people,  and  an  applewoman, 
and  Salisbury  Plain,  and  an  Armenian,  and  a  Welshman 
who  thought  himself  guilty  of  the  pechod  Yspryd  Glan." 
Whereat  dissatisfaction  upon  the  part  of  your  friend.  But 
what  the  four  books  mean  and  are  to  their  lovers  is  upon 
this  sort.  Written  by  a  man  of  intense  personality,  irre- 
sistible in  his  hold  upon  your  attention,  they  take  you  far 
afield  from  weary  cares  and  business  into  the  enamouring 
airs  of  the  open  world,  and  into  days  when  the  countryside 
was  uncontaminated  by  the  vulgar  conventions  which  form 
the  worst  side  of  "  civilized  "  life  in  cities.  They  give  you 
the  sense  of  emancipation,  of  manumission  into  the  liberty 
of  the  winding  road  and  fragrant  forest,  into  the  freshness 
of  an  ancient  country-life,  into  a  milieii  where  men  are  not 
copies  of  each  other.     And  you  fall  in  with  strange  scenes 


204  POST    LIMINIUM 

of  adventure,  great  or  small,  of  which  a  strange  man  is  the 
centre  as  he  is  the  scribe;  and  from  a  description  of  a 
lonely  glen  you  are  plunged  into  a  dissertation  upon  difficult 
old  tongues,  and  from  dejection  into  laughter,  and  from 
gypsydom  into  journalism;  and  everything  is  equally  de- 
lightful, and  nothing  that  the  strange  man  shows  you  can 
come  amiss.  And  you  will  hardly  make  up  your  mind 
whether  he  is  most  Don  Quixote,  or  Rousseau,  or  Luther, 
or  Defoe ;  but  you  will  always  love  these  books  by  a  brave 
man  who  travelled  in  far  lands,  travelled  far  in  his  own 
land,  travelled  the  way  of  life  for  close  upon  eighty  years, 
and  died  in  perfect  solitude.  And  this  will  be  the  least 
you  can  say,  though  he  would  not  have  you  say  it : 
Requiescat  i?i  pace  viator. 

OCTAVIUS   PULLEYN 

\The  speaker,  May  7,  1S98.] 

If  more  may  be  known  of  Octavius  Pulleyn,  I  know  not : 

but   I   know  that,    toward   the   close   of  the   seventeenth 

century,   curious    and    winning   century,   he   wrote   these 

lines  : — 

I. 

"  Within  the  haunted  thicket,  where 
The  feathered  Choristers  are  met  to  play  ; 
And  celebrate  with  voices  clear, 
And  accents  sweet,  the  praise  of  May  ; 
The  Ouzel,  Thrush,  and  speckled  Lark, 
And  Philomel,  that  loves  the  dawn  and  dark  : 
These  (l/w  inspired  throng) 
Adorn  their  noble  Theme  with  an  immortal  Song, 

While  Woods,  and  Vaults,  the  Brook  and  neighbouring 

Hill, 
Repeat  the  varied  close,  and  the  melodious  Trill. 

II. 
'  Here  feast  your  Ears,  but  let  your  Eye 
Wander,  and  see  one  of  the  lesser  frie 
Under  a  leaf,  or  on  a  dancing  twig 
Rup.e  his  painted  feathers,  and  look  big. 


OCTAVIUS   PULLEYN  205 

rirk  up  his  tayle,  and  hop  between 
The  boughs,  by  moving  only  to  be  seen  ; 

Perhaps  his  troubled  breast  he  frtmes 

As  he  doth  meditate  on  his  tunes  ; 
At  last  (compos'd)  his  little  head  he  rears, 
Towards  what  he  strives  to  imitate,  the  Sphears  ; 

And  chirping  then  begins  his  best, 

Falls  on  to  Pipe  among  the  rest ; 

Deeming  that  alPs  not  worth  a  rusk 

Without  his  Whistle  from  the  bush." 

Excellent !  It  is  the  opening  of  a  "  Pindariq'  Ode "  ad- 
dressed "  To  My  Dear  Friend  Mr.  Thomas  Flatman.  Upon 
the  Publication  of  his  Poems."  Mr.  Thomas  Flatman,  poet, 
painter  and  lawyer,  had  his  rare  felicities  in  verse.  Pope, 
that  splendid  thief,  disdained  not  to  take  from  him.  In 
especial,  he  enjoyed  a  sad  and  solemn  way  with  the 
mortuary  music  ;  also,  a  pleasing  vein  of  humour,  as  when 
he  wrote  his  bit  of  mordant  banter  "  To  Mr.  Sam  Austin  of 
Wadham  Coll :  Oxon,  On  his  most  unintelligible  Poems  "  : 
concluding  with 

"The  Beetles  of  our  Rhimes  shall  drive  full  fast  in 
The  wedges  of  your  worth  to  everlasting, 
My  Much  Apocalyptiq*  friend  Sam.  Austin." 

But  Thomas  is  poor  and  pale  beside  his  Pindariq'  friend, 
Octavius  of  the  singing  lips  and  seeing  eyes.  No7ninis 
umbra.,  he  is  a  ghost,  of  whom  I  know  nothing  ;  whilst  his 
little  bird,  the  least  of  birds,  lives  merry  and  musical  yet. 
Octavius  and  his  like,  phantom  gentlemen  in  the  "  haunted 
thicket "  of  old  years,  have  a  singular  fine  charm.  Until 
some  plaguey  investigator  of  libraries,  of  Rolls  and  Record 
Ofifices,  unearth  my  twilight  friend,  he  is  mine  to  dream 
over,  mine  to  play  with.  I  can  enter  him  a  student  at  the 
Inns  of  Court ;  make  him  a  tavern  wit  or  playhouse  censor ; 
I  can  turn  him  into  a  country  squire,  and  give  him  a  comely 
manor  in  the  taste  of  Inigo.  We  stroll  there  together 
through  the  "  Italianate  garden/'  with  its  statua  and  hssio 


206  POST   LIMINIUM 

and  pass  out  into  a  green  coppice.  It  shall  be  the  old  May 
morning  of  merry  England,  May  of  clear  sunlight  and  soft 
wind  ;  Octavius  shall  quote  me  his  Horace,  and  I  cap  him 
with  my  dearer  Virgil.  An  air  of  the  scholar's  affectation  sits 
prettily  upon  us,  an  Oxford  touch.  We  would  fain  esteem 
ourselves  Younger  Plinies  of  the  time,  and  a  neat  copy  of 
verses  is  our  pride.  Octavius  has  a  decent  fair  knack  at 
imitation  of  the  great  Mr.  Cowley,  and  ever  a  gratulatory 
ode  at  a  friend's  service.  So  go  we  gently  through  the 
May  morning  of  a  dream ;  of  winter  nights,  we  "  drink 
tobacco  "  by  the  fire  of  logs  in  a  parlour  of  black  panel,  and 
pore  together  upon  the  medals  of  popes  and  emperors.  Of 
such  sort  is  my  Octavius ;  and  if  I  weary  of  him  in  such 
sort,  he  shall  presently  proceed  ambassador  to  the  Hague, 
and  send  me  word  of  tulips. 

Out  upon  that  antiquary  who  shall  rob  me  of  my  Octavius, 
my  kindly  Proteus,  whose  changes  I  command  !  Yet  he 
may  not  take  from  him  one  thing  of  worth  :  his  name.  Our 
ancestors  had  much  bravery  in  this  matter,  Anthony  h.  Wood 
to  witness.  Many  good  gentlemen  adorn  to-day  the  names 
of  Porter,  Marsh,  Day  ;  but  not  a  man  of  them  bears  before 
his  surname  the  high  appellation  of  his  old  historic  name- 
sake, Endymion,  Narcissus,  Angel.  There  was  something 
of  distinction  in  being  by  name  Myrth  Waferer,  or  Bruno 
Ryves,  or  Marchmont  Needham,  or  Vavasor  Powell,  or 
Silas  Dorville ;  though  to  be  Menelaus  MacCarmagan  were 
perhaps  a  thought  too  lofty,  and  Theodoric  O'Brien  a  more 
comfortable  style.  Octavius  PuUeyn  lies  in  the  golden 
mean  :  it  has  a  sufficiency  of  strangeness  without  extrava- 
gance. All  these  gentlemen  had  their  being  and  these 
names  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  and 
assuredly  the  odd  or  sonorous  names  attract  us,  as  all 
things  individual  and  apart  attract.  So  my  Octavius,  dear 
ghostly  friend,  excites  and  warms  the  imagination.  To  be 
sure,  a  little  poet  and  dweller  in  the  dust,  with  his  single 
moment  of  success,  his  tiny  passage  to  remembrance ;  but 


OCTAVIUS   PULLEYN  20? 

when  I  think  of  Virgil's  Elysium  or  of  Raphael's  Parnassus, 
I  see  him  modest  among  the  fortunate  folk  and  great 
crowned  ones,  and  he  is  softly  saying  to  himself  his  four 
lines  to  Mr.  Flatman.     Anch'  io  poeta! 

Let  little  poets  learn  of  this  my  obscure  and  shrouded 
friend.     I  know  not  that  he  wrote  more  than  these  twenty- 
five  good  lines ;  but  they  are  good,  they  have  certainly  one 
lover,  and  it  suffices   Octavius.     He  sought  not  at  all  to 
storm  the  Sacred  Hill,  and  snatch  the  laurel  with  unseemly 
and  obstreperous  endeavours ;  to  fill  the  irritated  air  v/ith 
agitated  echoes.     He  knew  that  when  he  had  lain  in  earth 
two  hundred  years,  those  happy  lines  would  live,  if  in  the 
love  of  but  one  poor  listener,  by  their  proper  charm  and 
personality.     Later  men  seem  impatient  of  being  merely 
good  craftsmen ;  they  have  futile  hunger  to  be  great  also. 
The  greatest  attained  not  so  to  greatness ;  such  instancy 
of  desire  makes  the  bronze  of  Lucan,  not  the  gold  of  Virgil ; 
it   issues  in  volcano  flame,    not   sunlight.      Octavius   the 
"  umbratile,"  quiet  man,  was  content  with  a  miniature  im- 
mortality, a  fame  infinitesimal,  yet  not  pitiful ;  and  I  love 
him  for  it,  who  live  amid  Babel's  ambitiously  contending 
voices.     Compose,  with  cordial  delight  and  decent  pains, 
one  set  of  verses  which  the  sure  celestial  instinct  tells  you 
to  be  good,  permanently  pleasurable ;   dream,  that  in  two 
hundred  years  one  man  at  least  will  read  them  with  joy  and 
thanks.     It  is  a  glow  at  the  heart,  a  leap  in  the  pulses,  that 
humble  dream;  what  call  for  nervousness  and  clamour? 
A   cheerful   Octavius,   pleased   with   his   little   portion   of 
capacity,  and  not  yearning  to  exceed  it,  is  grateful  to  the 
eyes  of  gods  and  men. 

"  Nor  gods,  nor  men,  nor  Paternoster  Row, 
Endure  a  poet  who  is  just  so-soy' 

as  Horace  has  it,  or  very  nearly.  But  the  abhorred  medi- 
ocrity is  the  wild  and  struggling,  not  the  equable  and  nice. 
Exquisite  self-knowledge  and  classic  tact  led  to  the  right 


2o8  POST   LIMINIUM 

golden  mediocrity  of  such  as  Goldsmith  or  of  such  as 
Chenier ;  to  their  clear  and  just  perfection  of  finished,  un- 
forced art,  their  distinct  and  delicate  mastery.  In  these  is 
no  straining  of  the  note,  nor  uncertain  recklessness ;  no  pose 
as  of  an  assured  Olympian,  stationed  upon  the  heights  for 
everlasting.  In  silentio  et  in  spe  erit  fortitudo  vestra.  Let 
little  poets  remember  it,  and  be  what  they  are  capable  of 
being :  a  harmless,  pleasant  folk,  whose  careful,  casual 
utterance  may  charm  a  little,  centuries  hence.  It  is  some- 
thing of  glory  to  be  an  Octavius  Pulleyn,  the  happy  poet  of 
a  little  poem  still  fresh  and  sweet,  though  deep  lie  the  dust 
upon  Octavius.  That  is  his  plain,  and  peremptory,  and 
precious  moral,  a  platitude  of  unesteemed  and  inestimable 
value. 

But  my  sermon  has  betrayed  me  into  treason  against  my 
friend.  How  can  he  be  dead,  who  is  my  faithful  and  fond 
companion  ?  I  see  him  now ;  the  sunlight  glows  warm  over 
the  lawns  of  Gray's  Inn. 

"  These  be  the  gardens  loved  by  Lamb, 
Here  lodged  my  mighty  namesake  Sam, 
And  here  the  venal  Verulam," 

to  quote  an  obscure  MS.  And  there, under  the  magnifical  trees 
with  their  glossy  colonists,  the  famous  rooks,  there  he  strolls 
and  stays,  and  strolls  again,  as  Pepys  and  Addison's  Sir  Roger 
loved  to  stroll,  as  the  lyrical  Campion  of  Gray's  Inn  may 
have  done  before  them.  I  follow  him  from  my  windows, 
along  the  trim  walks  and  terraces,  by  the  flowered  great 
wates  of  ironwork,  up  the  stately  steps;  he  finds  the  London 
May  an  exhilarating  and  fragrant  season,  and  he  scarce 
regrets  his  country  parks  and  pastures,  v/hich  show  no 
green  more  living.  His  face  is  something  of  a  fine  oval, 
like  that  of  Mr.  Evelyn  of  Sayes  Court^ — Sayes  Court^  not 
yet  marred  and  befouled  by  the  Czar  of  Muscovy.  His 
dress  is  between  the  Stuart  and  the  Hanoverian,  and  he 
wears  it  well.     If  ghost  he  be,  it  is  an  elegant  ghost,  and 


FRIENDS   THAT    FAIL   NOT  209 

none  of  your  unkempt  spirits  ;  with  but  little  alteration,  he 
were  a  figure  for  Watteau.  He  is  smiling,  and  his  lips 
move ;  one  hand  is  gently  moving  too,  as  if  keeping  time  to 
music.  He  is  composing  a  pretty  piece  of  compliment  to 
his  friend  Mr.  Thomas  Flatman,  whose  book  is  for  the 
press ;  and  the  goodly  gardens  mind  him  of  his  own  green 
lawns  and  coverts,  where  the  birds  are  singing.  I  protest, 
that  as  he  comes  this  way,  I  catch  the  words : — 

"  Pirk  up  his  tayle,  and  hop  between 
The  boughs  ;  by  moving,  only  to  be  seen  ;" 

and  again  (is  he  playfully  thinking  of  his  own  little  strain  of 
music,  his  exiguous  piping  ?) : 

"  And  chirping  then  begins  his  best, 
Falls  on  to  pipe  among  the  rest  ; 
Deeming  that  all's  not  worth  a  rush 
Without  his  whistle  from  the  bush." 


FRIENDS    THAT   FAIL   NOT 

[77^1?  Academy,  Dec.  8,  1900  ;  The  Anti-Jacobin,  Oct.  3,  1891.] 
The  glowing  of  my  companionable  fire  upon  the  backs  of 
my  companionable  books ;  and  then  the  familiar  difficulty 
of  choice !  Compassed  about  with  old  friends  whose 
virtues  and  vices  I  know  better  than  my  own,  I  will  be 
loyal  to  loves  that  are  not  of  yesterday.  New  poems,  new 
essays,  new  stories,  new  lives,  are  not  my  company  at 
Christmastide,  but  the  never-ageing  old.  "  My  days 
among  the  dead  are  passed."  Veracious  Southey,  how 
cruel  a  lie  !  My  sole  days  among  the  dead  are  the  days 
passed  among  stillborn  or  moribund  moderns,  not  the 
white  days  and  shining  nights  free  for  the  strong  voices 
of  the  ancients  in  fame.  A  classic. has  a  permanence  of 
pleasurability :  that  is  the  meaning  of  his  estate  and  title. 
It  is  the  vexing  habit  of  many,  whose  loving  intimacy 
with  the  old  immortals  is  undoubted,  to  assume  and  say 

p 


2IO  POST  LIMINIUM 

that  no  one  now  reads  the  Religio  Medici,  or  the  Pickwick 
Papers,  or  Ben  Jonson's  Masques,  or  the  Waverley  Novels,  or 
Pope's  "Essay  on  Man,"  or  Dr.  Johnson's  Ra7nbler  and  Idler. 
Themselves  excepted,  there  are  no  votaries,  no  wilUng 
bond-slaves,  of  such  works.  It  is  not  credible.  I  believe 
that  in  numbers  we  are  a  goodly  company  who  joy  in  the 
fresh  humanities  of  the  old  literature,  and  are  not  without 
a  portion  of  Lamb's  spirit.  The  eight  volumes  of  Clarissa 
Harlowe, — does  the  world  contain  volumes  more  passion- 
ately pulsing  than  these,  "my  midnight  darlings,"  which 
tell  me  of  white  Clarissa  in  her  sorrows,  of  the  brilliant 
villainies  of  Lovelace  ?  How  can  that  tragedy,  that  comedy, 
grow  old  ;  and  who  in  his  right  mind  wishes  one  word  away 
from  its  voluminous  unfolding  ?  Or  the  evening  choice 
may  fall  upon  the  dazzling  cruelties  of  the  "  Dunciad,"  and 
its  brutal  brilliancy  people  the  room  with  ghosts  in  tattered 
raiment,  under  their  fleshless  arms  piles  of  "  Proposals  " 
for  a  new  version  of  Horace,  and  in  the  pallor  of  their 
grotesque  countenances  the  signs  of  an  habitual  starvation  : 
it  is  reality,  a  gaunt,  historic  truth. 

Presently  comes  a  voice  of  majestic  vastness  from  the 
chambers  of  the  incalculable  dead,  plangent,  triumphant, 
mystically  sweet :  the  voice  of  him  who  in  life  was  "  a 
king  among  death  and  the  dead."  Has  our  world  to-day 
outworn  the  wisdom,  wearied  of  the  music,  processionally 
flowing  from  the  Knight  of  Norwich  ?  As  little  as  it  has 
outgrown  the  poignant  thinking  of  Pascal,  the  sad,  the 
haughty,  the  proudly  prostrate  before  God ;  or  the  lacerated 
heart  of  Swift  the  lacerating.  But  at  this  cordial  period 
of  the  calendar  Swift  may  appear  too  grim.  Let  Fielding, 
Homer  of  novelists,  lead  in  Parson  Adams  with  his 
yEschybcs,  or  escort  Slipslop,  the  fair  and  frail.  It  were 
stupid  and  mendacious  to  aver  that  we  have  spoken  of 
friends  too  antiquated  for  ease  of  converse  with  them,  that 
the  books  of  yesterday  must  claim  our  preference,  that  we 
are  affected  and  ineffective  else,  and  aliens  in  the  air  we 


FRIENDS   THAT    FAIL   NOT  211 

breathe.  "  Peace,  for  I  loved  him,  and  love  him  for  ever ! 
The  dead  are  not  dead,  but  alive,"  cries  Tennyson.  What 
is  true  of  loved  humanity  is  true  also  of  loved  humanities, 
the  high  expressions  of  man's  mind.  As  Augustine  said 
of  the  Christian  faith,  here  is  a  beauty  both  old  and  new ; 
only  a  starveling  imagination  is  so  hampered  by  the  acci- 
dents of  any  ancient  excellence  that  it  cannot  discern  the 
essence  which  is  dateless.  Quaint,  old-fashioned,  say  some 
when  they  read  the  writings  of  their  forefathers ;  and  it  is 
said  with  a  confused  and  confounding  foolishness.  Language, 
manners,  circumstances, — these  may  not  be  ours  ;  but  have 
we  different  passions  and  human  relationships,  another 
interest  in  life  and  death  ?  Stripped  of  our  "  lendings," 
our  ancestors  and  we  are  the  same,  and  their  writings  are 
contemporary  with  our  own.  Smiles  can  be  kindly:  but 
there  is  something  painful  in  the  smiling  indulgence  with 
which  we  are  wont  to  regard  the  works  of  old  which  were 
once  in  the  very  forefront  of  modernity.  We  live  in  time, 
and  the  past  must  always  be  the  most  momentous  part  of  it. 
It  will  be  all  past  when  time,  that  accident  of  God,  is  over. 
"  I  will  remember  the  days  of  old  !  "  "  Whatever  else  we 
read.  Gibbon  must  always  be  read  too."  The  spirit  of 
Freeman's  verdict  applies  to  all  mastership  of  any  Muse. 
To  ignore,  to  treat  with  impatience,  to  be  soon  weary  of  an 
ancient  excellence  and  fame,  is  like  blindness  to  the  natural 
humanities  of  the  world,  to  sea  and  v/ind  and  stars,  to  the 
forests  and  mountains.  If  only  we  had  more  of  that  spirit 
of  tremulous  delight,  of  awe  in  ecstasy,  with  which  the 
men  of  the  Renaissance  read  the  recaptured,  the  resurgent 
classics  of  Greece  and  Rome !  Few  of  us  would  dare  to 
write  at  all,  had  we  always  before  the  eyes  of  our  minds 
remembrance  of  the  mighty.  Are  we  of  the  ApostoUc 
Succession  ?  are  our  reforms  legitimate  ?  do  we  consult  the 
general  consent  of  the  forefathers  ?  Milton  smiles  austerely 
at  the  thought,  and  Shakespeare  smiles  compassion ;  Virgil 
says  gently :  "  I,  dying,  wished  my  jEneids  to  be  burnt." 


212  POST    LIMINIUM 

But  the  torrent  of  trash  runs  gaily  on,  and  the  struggling 
critic  longs  for  a  breath  of  the  "  diviner  air  "  :  he  remembers 
Bacon's  saying,  that  some  books  may  be  read  "  by  deputy," 
and  wishes  that  he  could  so  read  the  futilities  upon  his 
table.     And  yet  all  is  repaid  by  those  happy  rarities  of 
time,  the  days  on  which  there  comes  his  unexpectant  way 
occasion  for  "  the  noble  pleasure  of  praising "  :  when  he 
can  say :  "  This  is  the  right  thing,  here  is  the  true  touch ; 
my  shelves  welcome  their  new  companion."     There  is  little 
fear  of  excellence  escaping   him ;  he   fears  that  fear  too 
much.     We  do  not  envy  the  fate  and  fame  of  him  who 
said  of  Wordsworth :  "  This  will  never  do  ! "  nor  of  him 
who  bade  Keats  "back  to  his  gallipots."     We  desire  no 
experience  of  the  feelings  with  which  publisher  or  editor 
remembers   that    he   "  declined    with    thanks "    what    the 
general  judgment   of    the    judicious   came   afterwards    to 
applaud.     But,  to  employ  the  impressive  imagery  of  Mr. 
Chadband,  I  will  not  go  into  the  city,  and,  having  seen  an 
eel,  return  to  bid  the  literary  world  "  rejoice  with  me,  for 
I  have  seen  an  elephant !  "     In  the  words  of  that  eloquent 
divine :  "  Would  that  be  te-rewth  ?  "    But  when  I  encounter 
living  genius  which  may  grow  to  noble  proportions,  it  were 
a  churlish  folly  to  belittle  it,  to   bestow  an  elegant  and 
timid  mediocrity  of  praise.     "  All  Horace  then^  all  Claudian 
now"  is  as  rash  a  wail  as  when  Byron  uttered  it,  though  the 
voices  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  were  heard  in  his  land. 
But  the  classics  have  attained ;  they  are  at  rest.     Complete, 
immutable,  they  have  for  us  no  surprises,  save  the  per- 
manent surprise  of  genius,  that  "  strangeness "  without  a 
strain  of  which  "  there  is  no  excellent  beauty,"  and  which 
keeps  its  virginal  first  freshness  from  the   "  valley  of  per- 
petual dream."     We  are  so  sure  of  the  classics  "  strongly 
stationed  in  eternity." 

"  There  exist  moments  in  the  life  of  man 
When  he  is  nearer  the  great  Soul  of  the  World 
Than  is  man's  custom," 


FRIENDS   THAT    FAIL   NOT  213 

says  Coleridge,  translating  Schiller.  The  readers  share 
with  the  writers  of  masterpieces  the  exaltation  of  such 
moments,  but  they  come  chiefly  at  sound  of  "ancestral 
voices."  About  contemporary  voices  there  is  an  element 
of  uncertainty  not  undelightful^  yet  forbidding  the  per- 
fection of  faith.  We  prophesy  and  wait.  And,  if  the  noble 
ancients  are  more  comforting  to  us  than  even  the  worthiest- 
seeming  moderns,  how  much  more  tolerable  and  pardon- 
able are  the  mediocrities  of  the  past  than  of  the  present ! 
They  are  historically  interesting.  I  would  rather  laugh 
over  the  poems  of  a  Gibber  or  a  Pye,  than  over  the  poems 
of  their  living  likes !  It  is  better  to  be  amused  than  ex- 
asperated, and  kindly  time  lets  me  laugh  at  that  past 
incompetence  which  would  annoy  me  were  it  present.  A 
monody  upon  the  Death  of  the  Princess  Charlotte,  totally 
devoid  of  merit,  does  not  rouse  the  wrath  aroused  by 
similar  performances  upon  the  death  of  Prince  Christian 
Victor.  The  insanities  of  a  Lodowick  Muggleton  or  a 
Joanna  Southcott  provoke  me  to  more  patient  an  anger 
than  the  diatribes  of  a  Dr.  Dowie.  The  blunders  of  the 
dead  are  over  and  done,  harming  no  one ;  the  blunders 
of  the  living  are  a  danger  and  a  nuisance.  It  is  a  pity 
that  anyone,  however  uncritical,  should  enjoy  the  Martin 
Tappers  or  Robert  Montgomerys  of  the  day ;  it  implies  an 
inability  to  enjoy  Milton.  No  man  can  serve  two  masters  : 
you  cannot  be  Fielding's  friend,  and  also  accept  the  colossal 
ineptitudes  of  our  most  popular  novelists,  artless,  humour- 
less, most  brazen.  Bad  novels  of  the  last  century  have 
never  failed  to  give  me  a  certain  pleasure.  I  trust  that 
posterity  may  be  able  to  extract  pleasure  from  the  bad 
novels  of  last  year,  for  I  am  not.  They  fill  me  with 
the  sourest  sadness,  which  is  an  unwholesome  state  of 
mind. 

....  Perhaps  there  is  no  country  where  literary  knowledge 
more  abounds  than  England;  and  none  where  so  many 
men,  capable  of  acquiring  it,  are  content  to  go  without  it. 


214  POST    LIMINIUM 

Never  was  a  country  where  men  of  ability,  and  sometimes 
of  genius,  were  less  anxious  to  strengthen  and  to  nourish 
their  minds  with  learning,  its  discipline  or  its  delight.  There 
are  some  twenty  great  writers  of  English  literature,  from 
Chaucer  down  to  our  day,  of  whom  every  intelligent  man 
knows  something ;  but  there  are  hundreds  of  writers,  worth 
reading  daily,  to  whom  professed  men  of  letters  are  indif- 
ferent or  blind. 

The  fact  was  illustrated  for  me  by  meeting  in  one  month 
with  three  men  of  letters,  each  of  recognised  capacity,  and 
each  young,  who  each  remarked  in  the  course  of  conversa- 
tion :  "  Oh,  I  don't  read  anything " :  and  it  was  clear  they 
did  not.      Voluntary   paupers  !    starving    their   souls,  im- 
poverishing their  brains,  and  trying  to  live  upon  the  vital 
heat  of  their  personal  genius.     It  may  be  remarked  among 
nearly  all  classes  of  literary  men  :  a  deliberate  indifference 
to  the  great  riches  of  literature  stored  up  from  old  times. 
No  doubt  the  men  of  self-sustaining  genius  read  something 
sometimes  in  the  department  of  letters.     They  must  have 
looked  into  the  correspondence  of  Pope,  of  Gray,  of  Cowper, 
of  Lamb.     But  how  many  hours  have  they  spent  over  the 
letters  of  Sir  Henry  Wotton,  of  Sir  John  SuckUng,  of  Far- 
quhar  ?     Oh,  the  grave  courtesy,  the  merry  wit,  the  brilliant 
good  humour,  of  these  three !     Yet  if  a  simple  reader  of 
pleasant  books  make  a  remark  about  them  to  some  flourish- 
ing impressionist  or  scientific  comedian,  he  will  be  met  with 
something  like  blank  ignorance.     Or  look  at  lyric  poetry : 
our  friends  of  genius  have  read  their  Herrick  and  Herbert, 
and  a  few  more.     But  what  of  Vaughan,  most  solemn  and 
beautiful  of  mystics  ?     Of  Crashaw,  most  polite  of  devout 
poets  ?     Of  Cotton,  that  charming  poet  of  genial  enjoyment 
and  dainty  passion  ?     Or  Habington's  Castara,  or  Donne's 
"  Anniversaries,"  or  Marvell's  perfect  work  ?    One  might  go 
on  to  a  dozen  names  :  Cleveland,  Denham,  Flatman,  Cam- 
pion, Wither,  Lovelace,  Carew,  and  all  the  inspired  company. 
Are  you  so  intent  upon  the  latest  eccentricity  of  Paris,  that 


FRIENDS   THAT   FAIL   NOT  215 

you  have  no  ears  for  these  singers  ?  Or  go  to  biography  : 
Boswell,  of  course,  and  Lamb  and  Gray.  But  there  is  a 
long,  long  list  of  good  biographies :  begin  by  reading 
through  a  few  thousand  pages  of  Anthony  a  Wood,  to  get 
the  true  savour  of  those  lives  of  the  ancient  worthies.  Or 
travels :  when  Mr.  Stanley  and  Lord  Randolph  Churchill 
cease  to  fascinate,  Sandys  and  Addison,  Ralegh  and 
Smollett,  Ray  and  Coryat,  might  prove  their  powers.  If 
the  monthly  magazines  grow  monotonous,  there  are  all  the 
immortal  Spectators  and  Tatkrs,  or  even  the  less  lively 
Ramblers,  ready  to  tempt  us.  Perhaps  we  are  a  little  tired 
of  the  wrangles  of  science  and  metaphysics :  even  those 
eminent  men,  Mr.  Spencer,  Mr.  Harrison,  Mr.  Huxley,  are 
not  perennially  delightful.  Then  we  might  try  the  taste  of 
some  older  controversies :  Dr.  Henry  More  on  the  NuUi- 
bists  and  Holenmerians,  Locke  and  Bishop  Stillingfleet, 
Berkeley  and  the  Minute  Philosophers.  Even  Beattie  on 
Truth  can  be  read  in  fine  weather.  You  refuse  to  talk  of 
Ibsen  for  a  month  ?  Well,  you  can  read  all  Webster,  Ford, 
and  Marlowe,  in  less  than  that  time.  You  have  not  seen 
a  novel  worth  reading  for  six  months  ?  Perhaps  you  may 
get  through  Clarissa  Harlowe  and  Sir  Charles  Grandison 
during  the  next  six.  Or  perhaps  a  diet  of  contemporary 
sonnets  leaves  you  hungry ;  let  me  prescribe  Drayton's 
Foljolbioji.  It  is  true  that  Mr.  Bohn's  translations  from 
the  Greek  and  Latin  lack  the  graces  of  style,  besides  creating 
a  false  impression  that  the  classic  writers  of  prose  or  poetry 
were  all  prose  poets.  But  go,  search  the  bookstalls : 
between  1500  and  1700  the  translations  from  the  classics 
are  to  be  counted  by  hundreds. 

It  is  of  no  use  :  the  starving  modern  man  of  letters,  like 
the  typical  philosopher  of  Germany,  "  shuts  his  eyes,  and 
looks  into  his  stomach,  and  calls  it  introspection."  So  it 
is:  but  the  process  "by  any  other  name"  would  be  no 
less  fooHsh.  Tired  of  himself,  of  other  people,  of  his  four 
walls,  and  of  the  street  outside,  what  can  he  do  ?    Clearly, 


2l6  POST    LIMINIUM 

not  read  something  both  old  and  new,  but  rather  compose  a 
" lyrical  note  "  upon  "  world-weariness,"  and  an  "aquarelle  " 
or  "pastel"  upon  "  Pimlico  at  twilight."  That  adds  to  the 
stock  of  beauty  and  wisdom  and  wit  in  the  world.  It  is 
done  with  a  light  touch,  a  penetrating  vision,  and  yet,  how 
it  brings  the  tears  to  our  eyes  ! 

"  The  sickness  of  the  weeping  wind 

And  dusty  tears  of  Pimlico  ! 

And  emerald  stars  begin  to  glow  ; 

O  sickness  of  the  weeping  wind 

In  twilit  Pimlico  I 

"  Yet  was  it  thus,  in  Pimlico, 

Ere  sickness  seize  the  \veeping  wind  ? 
Surely  the  music  was  not  blind, 
Chaunting  of  love  in  Pimlico  ! 
O  sick  and  weeping  wind  !  " 

If  I  call  upon  my  friend  of  self-sustaining  and  self- 
devouring  genius  with  a  newly-bought  folio  under  my  arm, 
will  he  not  smile  sadly  at  my  dull  pedantic  care  for  the  old 
and  outworn  masters  ?  I  have  but  grubbed  in  the  dust  of 
ages,  but  he  has  caught  the  gray  and  vanishing  soul  of  a 
tragic  impression.  If  my  friend  is  not  of  this  pallid  school, 
he  will  probably  belong  to  the  school  of  fresh  and  vigorous 
Blood.  He  is  an  emphatic  person,  not  unlike  the  Muscular 
Christian  of  forty  years  ago,  but  with  the  Christianity 
changed  into  Paganism.  Mind  you,  he  is  not  an  Athenian 
pagan,  an  Alcibiades,  but  something  brawnier  and  burlier, 
with  Yankee  smartness  instead  of  Attic  quickness.  He  has 
all  the  virtues,  but  he  hates  squeamishness :  his  metaphors 
are  hot  and  red.  No  sick  and  weeping  winds  for  him.  He 
will  write  you  a  short  story,  or  tell  you  a  long  one,  and 
wind  up  with  the  brief  words :  "  Currie's  conscience  just 
then  was  like  a  butcher's  shop  on  a  hot  summer's  day." 
We  know,  whatever  the  story  may  have  been  about,  that  it 
wasn't,  but,  hang  it  all !  you  must  show  that  you  don't  shirk 
nasty  things,  like  a  girl.  "Give  me  a  man  !"  (That  you 
may  turn  him,  my  dear  friend,  into  a  savage  ?) 


FRIENDS   THAT    FAIL   NOT  2l7 

A  great  deal  is  said  nowadays  about  the  various  follies  of 
modern  literature,  and  various  theories  are  given  to  account 
for  them.  There  are  plenty  of  reasons  why  literature  should 
be  in  a  somewhat  unsatisfactory  state  :  but  the  chief  reason 
IS  surely  too  much  ignorance  of  the  past,  an  unreflecting 
concentration  upon  the  present,  and  a  morbid  haste  to 
anticipate  the  future.  Able  men  commit  follies  of  taste 
in  style  and  in  idea  which  are  incompatible  with  a  willing 
study  of  the  old  great  masters,  and  of  the  old  writers  who 
come  worthily  after  them.  Many  a  dull  book  written  a 
hundred  years  ago,  is  better  reading  than  many  a  popular 
book  of  our  time  :  for  its  faults  are  faults  on  the  right  side. 
There  are  living  to-day  men  capable  of  the  finest  work, 
but  lacking  humiUty,  patience,  reverence,  three  forms  of  one 
inestimable  spirit. 

....  Perish,  cried  Newman,  the  whole  tribe  of  Hookers 
and  Jewels,  so  Athanasius  and  the  majestic  Leo  may  be 
mine  !  We  cannot  afford  to  let  go  the  Shining  Ones  upon 
the  heights.  It  does  not  matter  that  the  heights  are  so  high, 
that  our  intelligences  climb  up  so  poor  a  portion  of  the 
way.  He  would  be  a  liar  full  of  impudence  who  should 
dare  to  say  that  he  felt  wholly  at  ease  with  the  awful  Milton 
or  Dante,  with  the  solemn  meditations  of  Browne,  with  the 
dread  death-march  over  death  of  dread  Lucretius.  There 
are  times  when  the  high  things  of  art  seem  almost  incredible ; 
magnificent  delusions,  golden  dreams  :  their  creators'  pains 
must  surely  have  been  too  vast  for  bearing.  We,  with  our 
little  lamps  of  intelligence  in  our  hands,  go  tremblingly 
through  the  sacred  dimness,  hoping  to  comprehend  at  last 
a  little  more.  Our  reverence  is  a  religion;  genius,  like 
love  and  beauty,  is  a  pledge  of  divinity  and  the  everlast- 
ing; a  light  perfected  lyric  lures  us  heavenward;  and 
from  of  old  come  the  proudest  and  the  clearest  voices. 
The  voices  of  the  day  must  wait  for  their  consecrate 
authority  and  confirmed  applause  till  Time,  the  just, 
shall  please.     Take  me  with  you  in  spirit,  Ancients  of  Art, 


2l8  POST   LIMINIUM 

the  crowned,  the  sceptred,  whose  voices  this  night  chaunt 
3.  gloria  in  excehis,  flooding  the  soul  with  a  passion  of  joy 
and  awe. 


CLARENCE   MANGAN 

\The  AcadetJiy,  February  Sth,  189S.] 
No  one  can  thoroughly  realize  Mangan's  life  without  some 
knowledge  of  Dublin :  not  knowledge  of  Ireland  at  large, 
for  Mangan  had  practically  none,  save  by  reading;  but 
knowledge  of  that  Dublin  "  dear  and  dirty,"  splendid  and 
squalid,  fascinating  and  repulsive,  which  was  Mangan's 
from  the  cradle  to  the  grave.  There  is  there  an  unique 
piteousness  of  poverty  and  decay,  a  stricken  and  helpless 
look,  which  seem  appropriate  to  the  scene  of  the  doomed 
poet's  life.  It  was  a  life  of  dreams  and  misery  and  mad- 
ness, yet  of  a  self-pity  which  does  not  disgust  us,  and  of  a 
weakness  which  is  innocent ;  it  seems  the  haunted,  enchanted 
life  of  one  drifting  through  his  days  in  a  dream  of  other 
days  and  other  worlds,  golden  and  immortal.  He  wanders 
about  the  rotting  alleys  and  foul  streets,  a  wasted  ghost, 
with  the  "  Dark  Rosaleen  "  on  his  lips,  and  a  strange  light 
in  those  mystical  blue  eyes,  which  burn  for  us  yet  in  the 
reminiscences  of  all  who  ever  saw  him  and  wrote  of  the 
unforgettable  sight.  And,  with  all  his  remoteness,  all  his 
wretchedness,  there  was  a  certain  grimly  pathetic  and 
humorous  common-sense  about  him,  which  saved  him  from 
being  too  angelic  a  drunkard,  too  ethereal  a  vagabond,  too 
saintly  a  wastrel.  Hard  as  it  is  to  beUeve  at  all  times,  he 
was  an  intelligible,  an  explicable  human  being,  and  not 
some  "  twy-natured  "  thing,  some  city  faun.  All  the  accounts 
and  descriptions  of  him  show  us  a  man  whom  external 
circumstances,  however  prosperous  and  bright,  would  not 
have  prevailed  upon  to  be  as  other  men  are.  As  has  been 
said  of  other  poets,  "  he  hungered  for  better  bread  than  can 
be  made  of  wheat,"  and  would  have  contrived  to  lose  his 


CLARENCE   MANGAN  219 

way,  to  be  "  homesick  for  eternity,"  despite  all  earthly  sur- 
roundings of  happiness  and  ease.    Sensitive  in  the  extreme, 
he  shrank  back  into  the  shadows  at  a  breath,  not  merely  of 
unkindness,   but    of    unpleasantness;    he   shuddered    and 
winced,  blanched  and  withered  away  at  a  touch  of  the  east 
wind.     His  miseries,  which  dictated  to  him  that  agonized 
poem,  "The  Nameless  One,"  were  primarily  of  his   own 
creation,  realities  of  his  own  imagination,  and,  therefore, 
the  more  terrible :  they  were  the  agonies  of  a  child  in  the 
dark,  quivering  for  fear  of  that  nothing  which  is  to  him  so 
infinitely  real  and   dread  a   "  something."     For  Mangan's 
childhood,  boyhood,  first  youth,  though  hard  and  harsh, 
were  not  unbearably  so ;  many  a  poet  has  borne  far  worse, 
and  survived  it  unscathed.     A  rough  and  stern,  rather  than 
cruel,   father;    office   drudgery   with   coarse   companions; 
stinted,  but  not  insufficient  means;  a  general  absence  of 
congenial  sympathy  and  friendship, — these  are  rude  facts  to 
face ;  but  even  a  poet,  all  nerves  and  feeling,  need  not  find 
life  a  hell  because  of  them,  the  world  a  prison,  all  things  an 
utter  darkness  of  despair.     And  even  Mangan's  failure  in 
love,  whatever  be  the  truth  of  that  obscure  event,  would 
hardly  account,  by  its  own  intrinsic  sadness,  for  his  abysmal 
melancholy  and  sense  of  doom.     Further,  when  we  find 
him  in  true  deeps  of  actual  woefulness,  the  bond-slave  of 
opium  and  alcohol,  living  in  the  degradations  of  poverty, 
enchained,  as  St.  Augustine  has  it,  sua  ferrea  voluntate^  by 
the  iron  chain  of  his  unwilling  will,  yet  it  is  not  his  fall 
that  haunts  him,  but  that  sense  of  undeserved  early  torments 
and  tortures,  enfolding  him  as  with  a  black  impenetrable 
cloud.     It  was  not  only  the  lying  imaginativeness  of  the 
opium-eater  or  of  the  drunkard  that  made  him  tell  stories 
of  fearful  things  which  never  happened ;  nor  was  it  merely 
his  artistic  instinct  toward  presenting  his  life  not  quite  as 
it  was,  but  as  it  might  have  been,  nor  yet  his  elvish  turn 
for   a   little   innocent    deception.      Beyond   a   doubt,   his 
temperament,  immeasurably  delicate  and  sensitive,  received 


2  20  POST    LIMINIUM 

from  its  early  experiences  a  shock,  a  shaking,  which  left 
him  tremulous,  impotent,  a  leaf  in  the  wind,  upon  the  water. 
His  first  sufferings  in  life  were  but  the  child's  imagined 
ghosts ;  but  the  "  shock  to  the  system,"  to  his  imaginative 
sensitive  temperament,  was  lasting,  and  he  lived  in  a 
penumbra  of  haunting  memories  and  apprehensions.  In 
Browning's  words,  it  was  : 

"  The  glimmer  of  twilight, 
Never  glad  confident  morning  again  !  " 

Life  had  struck  him  in  his  affections  and  emotions :  he 
could  never  recover  from  the  blow,  could  but  magnify  it 
in  memory  and  imagination,  conceive  himself  marked  by 
it,  go  apart  from  the  world  to  hide  it,  go  astray  in  the 
world  to  forget  it.     That  was  Mangan's  tragedy. 

But  he  did  not  suffer  it  to  cloud  his  poetry  with  darkness 
of  expression  at  any  time,  nor,  at  its  finest  times,  with 
darkness  of  theme  or  thought.  It  forced  him  into  writing 
a  deal  of  unworthy  clever  stuff,  and  a  deal  of  excellent 
work  far  below  his  highest  ability  and  achievement.  But 
not  a  faint  shadow  of  unhappiness  dims  the  radiance  of  his 
"  Dark  Rosaleen,"  its  adoring,  flashing,  flying,  laughing 
rapture  of  patriotic  passion.  It  is  among  the  great  lyrics 
of  the  world,  one  of  the  fairest  and  fiercest  in  its  perfection 
of  imagery  and  rhythm ;  it  is  the  chivalry  of  a  nation's  faith 
struck  on  a  sudden  into  the  immortality  of  music.  And 
Mangan's  next  glory,  his  version  of  "  O'Hussey's  Ode  to 
the  Maguire,"  is  no  less  perfect  upon  its  lower,  yet  lofty, 
plane.  A  certain  Elizabethan  poet  has  this  pleasing  stanza 
upon  the  Irish  of  his  day,  as  he  viewed  them  : 

"The  Irish  are  as  civil,  as 
The  Russies  in  their  kind  ; 
Hard  choice,  which  is  the  best  of  both, 
Each  bloodie,  rude,  and  blind  ! " 

The  "  Ode  to  the  Maguire "  gives  the  noble  side  to  the 
question,  a  ferocity  that  is  heroic,  in  lines  of  the  largest 


CLARENCE   MANGAN  221 

Homeric   simplicity   and   greatness ;    and   as   the   "  Dark 
Rosaleen  "  sings  the  devotion  of  a  nation  to  their  country 
in  oppression,  so  this  chants  that  of  a  follower  to  his  chief 
in  defeat;  but  in  neither  is  there  the  note  of  despair,  in 
both  is  the  note  of  glory.     Other  of  Mangan's  poems  upon 
Ireland,  original  or  based  upon  Gaelic  originals,  have  a 
like  lustrous  quality :  he  loved  to  lose  himself  in  Ireland's 
past  and  future,  and  thereby  made  poems  which  will  have 
helped  to  make  the  future  Ireland.     Upon  such  work  as 
this  he  left  no  mark  of  his  mental  miseries  and  physical 
dishonours;  indeed,  his  poems,  though  often  tragic  with 
sorrow,  or  trivial  with  levity,  or  both  at  once,  are  always 
pure  and  clear  in  every  sense :  in  poetry,  at  least,  he  lived 
an  innocent  life.     Besides  his  own  Ireland,  there  were  two 
chief  worlds  in  which  he  loved  to  wander:  the  moonlit 
forests  of  German  poetry,  often  painfully  full  of  ''  moon- 
shine," and  the  glowing  gardens  or  glittering  deserts  of  the 
Eastern,  the  "  Saracenic  "  world.     He  wished,  half-whimsi- 
cally  and  half-seriously,  to  make  his  readers  believe  that  he 
knew  some  dozen  languages;  certain  it  is  that  he  had  a 
strong  philological  instinct,  and  much  of  that  aptitude  for 
acquiring  a  vast  half-knowledge  of  many  things  not  com- 
monly known,  which  he  shares  with  the  very  similar,  and 
dissimilar,  Poe.    But  his  "  translations  "  from  many  tongues, 
even  when,  as  in  the  case  of  German,  he  knew  his  originals 
well,  were  wont  to  be  either  frank  paraphrases  or  imitations, 
often  to  his  originals'  advantage.     Some  of  his  work  in  this 
kind  is  admirable,  and  of  a  cunning  art :  the  work  of  a  poet 
to  whom  rhythm  and  metre,  with  all  technical  difficulties 
and  allurements,  are  passionately  interesting ;  yet  we  regret 
the  time  spent  upon  most  of  them,  and  lost  to  his  own 
virgin  Muse.     He  seems  to  have  felt  that  he  was  content 
to  earn  the  wages  upon  which  he  lived  from  hand  to  mouth, 
by  such  secondary  work,  as  though  he  despaired  of  attempt- 
ing, or  preferred  to  keep  in  sacred  silence,  his  higher  song. 
He  has  given  us  little  of  that.     A  selection  from  his  poems 


222  POST   LIMINIUM 

can  be  bought  for  sixpence,  and  one  could  spare,  it  may 
be,  a  hundred  out  of  its  one  hundred  and  forty-four  pages. 
But  what  remains  is,  in  its  marvellous  moments  of  entire 
success,  greater  than  anything  that  Ireland  has  yet  produced 
in  English  verse,  from  Goldsmith  to  Mr.  Yeats.  From 
Mangan's  birth  in  1803  to  his  painful  and  merciful  death 
in  1849,  if  there  be  anything  joyous  or  pleasant  in  his 
record  the  reader  forgets  it  in  the  woes  and  glooms  that 
precede  and  follow.  He  had  true  friends,  he  could  talk 
with  them  brilliantly,  books  were  ever  a  solace  and  delight 
to  him ;  little  as  he  cared  for  fame,  he  knew  that  he  deserved 
it,  and  he  loved  his  art.  His  curious  humour,  chiefly  at  his 
own  expense,  was  sometimes  more  than  a  Heinesque  jest- 
ing, and  shows  him  with  sudden  phases  or  fits  of  good 
spirits.  But,  for  the  rest,  his  life  is  a  record  of  phantasmal 
dejections  and  cloudings  of  soul,  as  though  he  were  rejected 
of  God  and  abandoned  of  man.  At  almost  every  page,  a 
reader  fresh  to  his  name  and  fame  might  expect  the  next 
to  chronicle  a  suicide's  end,  like  those  of  Chatterton  and 
Gerard  de  Nerval.  His  story  is  infinitely  sad,  but  never 
abjectly  or  repulsively  so.  Here  is  the  foredoomed  dreamer, 
of  fragile  body  and  delicate  soul,  the  innocent  victim  of 
himself,  about  whom  we  know  much  that  is  frail  and 
pitiable,  nothing  that  is  base  and  mean :  the  voice,  often 
tremulous  in  lamentation  and  broken  by  weeping,  from 
which  rose  and  rang  the  very  glory  and  rapture  of  Irish 
song. 

"  Him  grant  a  grave  to,  ye  pitying  noble, 

Deep  in  your  bosoms  :  there  let  him  dwell ! 

He,  too,  had  tears  for  all  souls  in  trouble 
Here,  and  in  Hell." 


SANTO   VIRGILIO 


SANTO   VIRGILIO* 

[The  Academy,  Feb.  lo,  1900.] 
Bayle,  in  his  article  upon  Virgil — a  plague  upon  the  pro- 
bable accuracy  of  pedantry  which  writes  Vergil ! — remarks  : 
"  //  7iy  a  rieii  de  plus  ridicule  que  ce  que  Von  conte  de  sa 
magie,  et  des  pretendus  prodiges  qu'il  fit  voir  mix  Napoli- 
tains."  After  which  trenchant  and  terse  verdict  there 
follows,  as  usual,  one  of  those  delightfully  colossal  notes, 
which,  for  very  wantonness  of  erudition,  always  remind  us 
of  Burton.  But  that  magie  and  those  prodiges  have  been 
the  theme  of  laborious  scholarship,  and  found  to  be  of 
much  significance.  Signor  Comparetti,  of  Florence  (per- 
haps the  most  variously  learned  of  living  men),  has,  in  his 
work  on  Virgil  in  the  Middle  Ages,  given  us,  once  for 
all,  the  finest  word  of  scholarship  upon  the  matter;  and 
now  there  comes  to  us  from  Florence  a  little  work,  by  way, 
as  it  were,  of  supplement  to  that  masterpiece.  Mr.  Leland,* 
creator  of  Hans  Breitmann,  translator  of  Heine,  anthro- 
pologist among  American  Indians  and  European  gypsies, 
has  of  late  devoted  himself  to  a  singular,  a  fascinating, 
an  (to  put  it  German-wise)  in -difficulties -and -doubts - 
abounding  field  of  investigation.  A  few  years  ago  he 
published  his  Roman  Etruscan  Remains  iti  Popular  Legend^ 
wherein  he  claimed  to  show  that  in  Italy  there  exists, 
side  by  side  with  Christianity,  a  most  venerable  and 
primitive  Paganism ;  not  the  formal  civic  religion  of 
ancient  cultured  Rome,  but  a  thing  of  the  villages  and 
woods  and  fields  and  vineyards;  a  true  product  of  lusty 
wild  Mother  Earth ;  never  spoken  of  in  senatorial  edicts 
nor  merged  into  the  hierarchical  order  of  State  religion. 
Etruria,  that  mysterious  region  of  a  vanished  civilization, 
was   its   chief  home ;    and    its  '-•  practices   remain,    in   the 

*  The  Unpublished  Legends  of  Virgil.     Collected  by  Charles  Godfrey 
Leland.     {Elliot  Stock.)     1900. 


224 


POST   LIMINIUM 


form  of  sorcery  and  magic,  wizardry  and  incantation, 
witchcraft  and  necromancy,  in  the  present  Italy  of  to-day, 
dying,  doomed  to  die,  yet  discoverable  by  research  and 
patience  still.  In  a  word,  that  popular  body  of  beliefs  and 
superstitions,  whereof  the  old  classics,  by  tantalising 
glimpses,  make  us  well  aware  as  having  prevailed  in 
classic  Italy,  has  never  perished  from  the  soil  of  Italy. 
Impoverished,  contaminated,  debased,  jealously  hidden  out 
of  sight,  it  is  still  there.  Have  patience  and  cunning,  and 
you  will  find  it  in  the  hearts  and  upon  the  lips  of  withered 
crones,  of  peasants  versed  in  ancestral  folklore.  It  will 
reach  you  in  the  rudest  of  Italian  dialects,  and  from  the 
least  modernised  of  Italian  districts ;  but  it  also  lurks  even 
beneath  the  shadow  of  Santa  Croce  at  Florence,  and  of  St. 
Peter's  at  Rome. 

Mr.  Leland  is  incapable  of  dulness,  but  he  has  his 
defects.  He  is  vivid,  picturesque,  dramatic,  exciting,  at 
the  expense  of  orderliness,  sobriety,  method.  He  gives  us 
a  brilliant  bundle  of  notes  and  sketches,  rather  than  a 
finished  book.  He  would  sooner  be  careless  than  pedan- 
tic, inaccurate  than  dogmatic.  He  is  a  writer  whose 
veracity  one  cannot  question,  but  whose  authority  one 
hesitates  to  quote ;  he  is  more  enjoyable  than  useful.  It 
is  sometimes  hard  to  make  up  one's  mind  whether  or  not 
he  wishes  to  be  of  real  assistance  to  the  scientific  student 
of  anthropology.  His  light-hearted  indifference  to  pre- 
cision infects  his  proof-reading.  We  shrink,  in  the  present 
volume,  from  misprints  which  make  Browning  unmeaning, 
Martial  both  unmeaning  and  unmetrical.  Another  flaw, 
or  fault,  derogatory  to  any  serious  and  courteous  scholar, 
is  his  constant  girding  at  the  Christian  religion,  especially 
in  its  Catholic  form,  in  a  vein  of  humour  which  entirely 
fails  to  be  humorous,  and  which  would  still  be  offensive 
even  if  successful.  But  let  us  turn  from  this,  and  come 
to  the  more  alluring  theme  of  Santo  Virgilio. 

Signor  Comparetti  devotes  his  great  work  to  the  study 


SANTO   VIRGILIO  225 

of  the  mediaeval  Virgil  as  he  appears  in  the  literature 
of  the  learned,  and  of  that  literature  as  applied  to  the 
amusement  of  the  less  learned  and  the  illiterate.  He  speaks 
of  little  else  but  what  can  be  read  in  extant  MSS.  or  print, 
and  gives  but  a  few  lines  to  the  Virgil  whose  transmogri- 
fied phantom  flits  yet  in  living  legend  underived  from 
literary  sources,  that  is,  of  course,  to  say,  not  immediately 
and  consciously  derived,  but  traditional.  Mr.  Leland, 
struck  by  this  fact,  set  himself  to  collect,  by  his  usual 
methods,  Virgilian  legends  alive  among  the  people,  with 
the  result  that  he  presents  to  us  some  fifty  tales ;  and  it  is 
safe  to  say  that  many,  if  not  most,  of  them  are  assignable 
to  no  known  source  in  the  mass  of  mediaeval  Virgilian 
legend  extant  as  literature.  Obviously,  the  mediaeval 
writers,  of  whatever  kind,  who  have  preserved  for  us  the 
fantastic  Virgil  of  popular  myth  could  not  record  all  they 
knew  or  heard ;  and  there  came  a  time  when  such  legends 
cease  to  be  collected.  But  they  did  not  therefore  cease 
to  be  handed  down  among  the  people ;  and  the  popular 
Italian  memory,  which  is  a  museum  of  confused  relics, 
and  the  popular  Italian  imagination,  which  is  a  factory  of 
things  fanciful  or  grotesque,  have  between  them  produced 
these  extraordinary  narratives,  wherein  the  medley  mediaeval 
conceptions  of  history  and  science  and  the  supernatural 
are  in  full  vigour.  Recorded  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  they  essentially  belong  to  the  ages  which  made 
"  Virgil,  Duke  of  Naples,"  the  contemporary  of  Homer 
and  of  King  Arthur  and  of  the  Soldan  of  Babylon ;  they 
descend  in  spiritual  and  imaginative  lineage  from  the 
times  when 

"  Son  nom,  balbutie  par  les  hommes  nouveaux, 
Fit  se  lever,  dans  les  tenebres  des  cerveaux, 
Laure  d'or  et  de  feu,  le  fantome  d'un  mage. 
Le  peuple,  qui  venere  encore  son  image, 
Broda  sur  sa  memoire  un  etrange  roman 
De  sorcier  secourable  et  de  bon  necroman." 


226  POST    LIMINIUM 

Assuredly,  it  is  as  "  sorcicr  sccourabk  et  bon  necroitian  "  that 
this  "  translated  "  Virgil  figures  in  Mr.  Leland's  books ;  he 
has  still  the  "  white  soul "  that  Horace  loved,  and  is  still, 
despite  his  strange  transformations,  the  Virgil  over  whose 
tomb  at  Puteoli,  so  they  sang  in  the  churches  of  Mantua, 
Saint  Paul  wept  and  said :  "  Ah,  what  manner  of  man  had 
I  not  made  of  thee  had  I  but  found  thee  living,  O  prince 
of  poets ! "  True,  he  is  frolicsome,  prankish,  as  well  as 
helpful  and  benevolent;  but  then,  as  Faustus  felt,  if  you 
are  a  magician,  the  temptation  to  merry  jests  and  practical 
jokes  is  irresistible.  Here,  with  one  exception,  he  does 
nothing  quite  unworthy  of  the  Virgil  whom  primitive  and 
later  Christianity  hailed  as  the  herald  of  the  Nativity,  the 
first  discerner  of  the  Star  of  Bethlehem,  the  Virgil  who 
chaunted  in  his  inspired  "  Pollio "  the  Desire  of  the 
Nations,  Him  who  should  come.  There  is  nothing  of  the 
Virgil  whom  harsher  spirits  accused  of  working  wonders 
"  by  whitchcraft  and  nigramansy  thorough  the  help  of  the 
devylls  of  hell."  This,  according  to  one  of  Mr.  Leland's 
stories,  was  the  fashion  of  Virgil's  own  coming,  and  it  is 
exquisitely  imagined  of  him  whom  Renan  calls  "  le  tetidre 
ct  clairvoyatit  VirgikJ"  There  was  a  lady  of  Rome  called 
Helen,  the  world's  wonder  for  beauty,  but  she  would  not 
wed  for  terror  of  childbirth;  she  therefore  fled  to  an 
impregnable  tower  far  without  the  walls ;  but  (and  here, 
as  Mr.  Leland  notes,  we  have  the  Danae  myth),  Jupiter 
descended  as  a  shower  of  gold-leaf,  and  it  fell  into  her  cup, 
which  she  had  no  fear  to  drink. 


"  But  hardly  had  Helen  drunk  the  wine  before  she  felt  a  strange  thrill 
in  all  her  body,  a  marvellous  rapture,  a  change  of  her  whole  being, 
followed  by  complete  exhaustion.  And  in  time  she  found  herself  with 
child,  and  cursed  the  moment  when  she  drank  the  wine.  And  to  her 
in  this  way  was  born  Virgil,  who  had  in  his  forehead  a  most  beautiful 
star  of  gold.  Three  fairies  aided  at  his  birth  :  the  Queen  of  the  Fairies 
cradled  him  in  a  cradle  made  of  roses.  She  made  a  fire  of  twigs  of 
laurels  ;  it  crackled  loudly.     To  the  crackling  of  twigs  of  laurel  was  he 


SANTO   VIRGILIO  227 

born  ;  his  mother  felt  no  pain.  The  three  each  gave  him  a  blessing  : 
the  wind  as  it  blew  into  the  window  wished  him  good  fortune ;  the 
light  of  the  stars,  and  the  lamp,  and  the  fire,  who  are  all  spirits,  gave 
him  glory  and  song.  He  was  bom  fair  and  strong,  and  strong  and 
beautiful ;  all  who  saw  him  wondered." 

It  is  characteristic,  this  mingling  of  Helen,  Danae, 
Jupiter,  the  Fairies,  Rome;  elsewhere  in  the  piece  we 
have  the  King  of  the  Magicians,  the  Emperor,  and  the 
Turks.  It  were  nothing  wonderful  if  we  also  had 
Abraham,  Socrates,  Julius  Caesar,  and  the  Pope,  all 
meeting  in  this  wonderland  out  of  time  and  space.  We 
should  be  grateful  to  Mr.  Leland  had  he  rescued  for  us  no 
more  than  the  perfect  passage  quoted,  so  unconsciously 
superb  and  glittering  a  praise  of  the  everlasting  Virgil. 
And  there  are  other  things  in  the  book  hardly  less  beauti- 
ful, together  with  a  mass  of  legends  depicting,  in  a  strain 
of  innocent  jocularity,  this  Virgil  of  the  mediaeval  phantasy, 
saint  and  mage.  In  this  aspect,  the  work,  as  we  have 
said,  is  a  complement  to  Signor  Comparetti's  elaborate 
study;  but  it  also  continues  Mr.  Leland's  studies  in  the 
survival  of  that  secret  paganism  ineradicable,  at  least  in 
spirit,  from  the  thrice-haunted  earth  of  Italy.  Here  are 
spells,  incantations,  remembrances  of  infinitely  ancient 
deities  and  powers,  which  at  once  impress  the  reader  as  far 
older  in  spirit  than  the  tales  and  legends  in  which  they  are 
embodied  ;  as  older,  not  only  than  the  historic  Virgil,  but 
older  than  the  first  foundation  and  walls  of  Rome. 
*'  Naturam  expellas  ftirca^  tameji  usque  reairrit "  :  worship 
of  "  Madre  Natura  "  is  in  some  form  inevitable.  With  the 
educated  it  turns  to  poetry  or  a  poetical  pantheism ;  with 
the  less  sophisticated  it  abides  as  something  much  more 
practical. 

No  poet  has  shared  the  astonishing  fate  of  Virgil ;  no 
other  writer  of  antiquity  has  been  so  familiar  a  name  to 
Christianity.  Signor  Comparetti  has  supplied  an  abun- 
dance of  historical  reasons  why  this  should  be  so,  and,  as 


228  POST   LIMINIUM 

all  scholars  know,  a  special  veneration  began,  even  in  his 
lifetime,  to  gather  round  the  person,  and  upon  his  death, 
round  the  tomb,  of  him  whom  Rome  regarded  as  the 
laureate  and  paramount  poet  of  Rome  :  in  his  own  realm 
he  held  the  throne,  wore  the  laurel  and  the  imperial  robe. 
History  explains  why,  even  in  after  ages  insensible  to  his 
essential  greatness,  he  retained  the  pre-eminence.  And 
yet  that  veneration,  which  is  at  its  noblest  height  in 
Dante,  at  its  lowest  in  certain  of  the  most  insensate  myths 
concerning  him,  seems  to  have  about  it  an  inner  propriety 
and  congruity  and  significance.  For  the  poet  of  imperial 
Rome  is  also  the  poet  of  human  sadness  and  mortal  longing ; 
in  him  is  the  craving  for  a  Golden  Age,  the  apprehension 
of  suffering  and  death,  the  feeling  of  fatality,  the  sense  of 
the  mystery  of  things,  the  mingled  exultation  and  melan- 
choly of  man,  the  haunting  appeals  of  nature,  the  mystical 
meanings  of  beauty,  the  manifold  marvel  of  existence. 
Virgil  is  one  of  his  own  pale  ghosts,  stretching  forth  his 
hands  toward  "the  farther  shore,"  and  dreaming  of  a 
world  regenerate ;  he  embodies 

"...  the  prophetic  soul 
Of  the  wide  world  dreaming  on  things  to  come." 

"  The  chastest  poet  and  royalest  that  to  the  memory  of 
man  is  known,"  as  Bacon  calls  him,  has  a  note  of  univer- 
sality, a  kinship  with  all  the  race  of  man.  The  "  courteous" 
Virgil,  as  Dante  loves  to  say,  has  a  dignity  of  compassion, 
a  priestly  bearing,  an  ever  gracious  and  majestic  utterance. 
In  a  sense  far  deeper  than  that  of  mediaeval  writers  or 
modern  peasants  of  Italy,  he  is  a  magician,  an  enchanter, 
touching  hearts  to  tears  and  thoughts  of  reverence.  Like 
Plato,  he  sometimes  seems  trembling  upon  the  borders  of 
Christianity,  groping  for  it  wistfully,  filled  with  the 
emotions  of  desire  which  it  satisfies.  Grotesque  as  often 
were  the  travesties  made  of  him,  in  his  mediaeval  cha- 
racter of  supreme  thaumaturgist  and  lord  over  the  wisdom 


ARCHBISHOP   LAUD  229 

of  the  universe;  absurd  as  it  may  sound  to  hear  him 
spoken  of  to-day  as  a  great  "  signor,"  something  between 
Simon  Magus  and  Saint  George,  and  Haroun  Alraschid 
and  Don  Quixote  and  Prospero;  yet  we  are  not  taken 
utterly  aback  by  the  unique  destiny  which  has  effected 
this.  For  in  the  melancholy  majesty  of  his  mighty  line 
we  commune  with  the  "  white  soul "  which,  at  the  height 
of  Rome's  magnificence,  was  not  of  that  age,  but  of  all 
ages,  in  virtue  of  an  intense  humanity.  If  he  did  not,  in 
man's  service,  control  the  powers  of  nature,  none  has  more 
profoundly  expressed  and  praised  them,  the  august  work- 
ings amid  which  man  lives.  If  he  did  not  with  authority 
go  about  doing  good  to  men,  none  has  more  fully  and 
perfectly  given  a  voice  to  the  infinite  longing  of  their  souls, 
nor  spoken  with  a  tenderer  austerity. 


ARCHBISHOP  LAUD 

[The  spectator,  March  23,  1895.] 
Before  Laud,  no  one  in  high  place  had  died  for  the 
Anglican  Church,  as  understood  in  our  day  by  Keble  and 
Pusey ;  he  set  the  seal  of  his  blood  upon  the  English 
Church  as  a  Primitive  and  Catholic  body,  neither  of  Rome 
nor  of  Geneva.  Think  what  they  may  of  his  political  and 
social  action,  of  his  temper,  prudence,  and  statesmanship, 
Laud  remains  for  High  Anglicans  the  valiant  soldier  of 
their  faith,  stainless  in  moral  character,  excellent  in 
learning,  staunch  and  stout  in  the  exact  truth,  fearing  not 
the  face  of  man. 

.  .  .  Laud's  position  had  a  twofold  difficulty.  He  was 
the  first  spiritual  Head  of  the  Reformed  Church  in  England, 
after  the  final  Elizabethan  settlement,  who  maintained  the 
High  Church  doctrine  and  discipline ;  and  he  was  the  last 
statesman-prelate  in  England,  at  a  time  when  the  possi- 
bility and  the  utility  of  such  a  man  were  outworn  and  past. 


230  POST   LIMINIUM 

A  Study  of  the  "  personal  religion  "  of  Henry  VIII.'s  three 
crowned  children  would  be  of  strange  value  to  psycholo- 
gists and  to  moral  theologians ;  but  certainly  the  historian 
must  agree  with  Dr.  Stubbs,  that  the  ultimate  religious 
issue  of  those  three  reigns  was  "  a  compromise,  satisfactory 
to  no  party,  and  very  unsatisfactory  indeed  to  the  consti- 
tutional lawyer  or  historian,  but  possibly  the  best  arrange- 
ment compatible  with  circumstances."  The  Marian  per- 
secution excited  Reformed  Churchmen;  they  returned, 
fresh  from  "  eating  mice  at  Zurich  "  and  elsewhere,  full  of 
a  fiery  Protestantism  which  saw  in  prelacy  and  cere- 
monialism "  the  rags  of  Popery."  They  burned  with  zeal 
for  a  rigid  theocracy  free  from  the  trammels  of  ancient  law 
and  order ;  they  plunged  into  "  the  Lord's  quarrel "  and 
"  the  Lord's  controversy."  They  were  not  harmonious 
among  themselves  :  but  all  of  them,  and  of  those  who  in 
England  agreed  with  any  of  them,  were,  in  Bossuet's  phrase, 
somewhat  expanded,  "  seekers,  so  called  because,  seventeen 
hundred  years  after  Christ,  they  were  still  seeking  for  true 
religion,  and  had  not  found  it."  Many  of  them  believed 
that  in  the  Calvinist  scheme  they  had  the  pure  type  of 
early  Christianity :  but,  historically,  the  type  was  new. 
Laud  met  them  all  with  a  certain  academic  impatience  : 
*'  Lord  !  what  fools  these  mortals  be ! "  To  resent  the 
decent  and  authoritative  ways  of  religion ;  to  reject  the 
voice  of  centuries  ;  to  confound  Anglicanism  with  Popery ; 
to  erect  a  new  hierarchy  of  preachers  ;  or  to  bid  every  man 
or  every  congregation  be  a  law  for  himself  or  themselves, — 
all  that  irritated  the  scholar,  the  antiquary,  even  the  artist 
and  cesthete,  in  Laud.  "  A  fellow  of  mean  extraction  and 
of  arrogant  pride,"  says  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  that  aristocratic 
saint  of  cultured  Puritanism.  She  should  have  said,  a 
man  of  worthy  middling  extraction,  of  hot  temper,  and  of 
strong  convictions,  which  he  took  to  be  common-sense. 
In  the  Laud  and  Strafford  correspondence,  it  is  not  pleasant 
to  hear  the  two  men  hallooing  T/ioroug/i  /  across  the  Irish 


ARCHBISHOP   LAUD  23I 

Channel,  with  little  private  jests,  and  mutual  encouragement, 
and  a  common  impatience  of  their  opponents.  But  that 
correspondence  reveals  no  more  than  does  Laud's  Diary,  a 
tyrant  great  or  small ;  he  is  rather  like  the  obstinate  jury- 
man or  committee-man,  simply  annoyed  at  antagonism. 
These  fellows,  your  Prynnes,  Burtons,  Bastwicks,  or  your 
Scots  mob,  to  set  themselves  against  the  powers  that  be, 
and  against  reverend  antiquity  !  It  is  like  the  college  don 
rating  an  undergraduate  who  will  not  observe  some  college 
rule  :  age  against  youth,  prescription  against  innovation, 
authority  against  license.  "  Civil  liberty,"  said  Butler, 
preaching  before  the  House  of  Lords  on  King  Charles's 
Day,  "  the  liberty  of  a  community^  is  a  severe  and  restrained 
thing :  implies,  in  the  notion  of  it,  authority,  settled  subor- 
dinations, subjection  and  obedience ;  and  is  altogether  as 
much  hurt  by  too  little  of  this  kind,  as  by  too  much  of  it." 
That  was  Laud's  view.  "  This  is  the  way  ;  walk  ye  in  it." 
It  is  an  anachronism  to  cry  out  upon  him  for  his  methods, 
his  Star  Chamber  and  High  Commission  manners.  A 
citizen  in  Shelley's  dramatic  fragment,  "  Charles  the  First," 
at  sight  of  Leighton's  wounds,  exclaims  : 

"  Are  these  the  marks  with  which 
Laud  thinks  to  improve  the  image  of  his  Maker 
Stamped  on  the  face  of  man  ?  " 

Yet  that  good  indignant  citizen  would  have  strung  up  a 
Papist  or  a  Quaker,  after  cruel  torment  and  mutilation,  and 
thought  that  he  was  "hewing  Agag  in  pieces  before  the 
Lord."  But  [the]  biographers  clearly  and  conclusively 
prove  their  case,  when  they  plead  that  Laud's  "  cruelties  " 
were  not  only  no  whit  in  excess  of  contemporary  custom, 
but  actually  fell  short  of  it.  Like  a  magistrate  or  a  school- 
master, he  often  felt  that  "  a  good  whipping  will  cure  this 
nonsense;"  he  had  no  personal  pleasure  in  inflicting 
punishment.  Nor  did  he  hold  the  divine  right  of  kings 
with  any  extreme  insistence ;  he  had  nothing  in  common 


232  POST   LIMIXIUM 

with  that  acrid  Erastian,  Hobbes,  nor  with  the  later 
violence  of  Sacheverell.  Yet,  since  King  James  and  his 
"no  Bishop,  no  King,"  the  English  Church  had  heartily 
thrown  herself  upon  the  side  of  a  monarchy  so  allied,  by 
its  own  confession,  to  episcopacy.  And  the  confession  was 
largely  true  :  in  Stuart  times,  all  authority  hung  together. 
The  fanatic  sectary,  with  his  liberty  of  conscience,  his 
allegiance  to  God  alone,  was  a  danger  to  the  State ;  what- 
ever concessions  Charles  and  Buckingham  and  Strafford  and 
Laud  might  have  made,  the  Revolution  would  have  come, 
the  strange  and  tragic  vindication  of  our  liberties  through 
blood  and  fire  and  tyranny.  And  so  the  simple  gentleman 
or  tradesman  who  resented  undue  public  burdens,  joined 
hands  with  the  religious  enthusiast ;  Church  and  State  were 
one,  and  oppressed  them  equally,  and  through  the  same 
ministers.  Most  modern  men  have  probably  asked  them- 
selves :  Should  I  have  been  Roundhead  or  Cavalier  ?  And 
most  must  have  found  it  a  difficult  question.  Laud  had  no 
difficulty ;  like  Burke,  he  held  old  institutions  to  be  sacred, 
almost  because  they  were  old ;  in  venerable  and  hallowed 
things  was  a  sure  ground,  and,  for  rational  men,  a  large 
room.  And  Laud  was  no  hidebound  ecclesiastic  to  whom 
the  ecclesiastical  life  and  order  are  dearer  and  nearer  than 
the  spiritual;  Saint  Charles  Borromeo  or  Saint  Francis  of 
Sales  was  scarce  more  devout  and  passionately  humble  in 
the  interior  life.  And  in  such  matters  as  education  and 
learning.  Laud  was  Aristotle's  "  magnificent  man."  Oxford 
and  Dublin  had  no  truer  benefactor  than  their  Chancellor, 
Laud,  a  princely  scholar  and  patron  of  letters,  a  man  in 
many  ways  ahead  of  his  age,  a  man  of  research  and  eru- 
dition. WTien  the  Parliamentary  Court  taunted  him  with 
his  Scotch  Liturgy  for  its  Popish  leanings,  he  retorted  that 
he  could  wish  the  English  Prayer-book  were  in  the  same 
points  equally  conformable  with  the  best  antiquity.  In 
all,  we  see  a  man  of  fervent  resolution,  who  had  no  patience 
— or,  at  least,  too  little  patience, — with  opposition. 


ARCHBISHOP   LAUD  333 

A  Chief  Justice  has  an  interview  with  him.    We  know  the 
facts  of  the  case  at  issue ;  he  and  the  Archbishop  were 
equally  right  and  wrong.     But  the  Chief  Justice  left  the 
Archbishop,  "  choked  with  a  pair  of  lawn  sleeves."     And 
we  remember  that  famous  talk  of  Hyde  with  Laud  in  the 
Lambeth  Gardens,  not  unlike  a  famous  talk  of  Dr.  Johnson 
with  Bennet  Langton.     Laud  refused  to  allow  that  he  was 
really  discourteous,  brow-beating,  imperative  ;  it  was  but  a 
natural  infirmity  of  manner ;  he  liked  to  do  his  business,  and 
have  done  with  it.     Men  who  in  all  sincerity  did  not  find 
themselves  helped,  but  rather  hindered,  in  their  devotions, 
by  ornate  or  even  noticeable  ceremonial,  who  found  "  the 
word  of  the  Lord,"  the  preached  word,  their  best  means  of 
grace,  met  in  Laud  a  man  to  whom  such  worship  was  not 
merely  unmeaning,  but  absurd.     Men,  red-hot  from  *'  Jack 
Calvin's"  school,  to  set   themselves   against  Cyprian  and 
Augustine,  and  the  laws  of  England !     The   trouble   lay, 
often  enough,  in  the  novelty  of  his  Anglicanism :  Parker 
and  Abbot  had  not  discoursed  so ;  even  Hooker,  with  his 
deathbed  intercourse  with  Saravia,  did  not  speak  so ;  not 
all  Laud's  fellow-prelates  taught  so.     And  what  a  bishop 
might  have  taught  and  inculcated  in  his  own  diocese  was 
not  equally  acceptable  from  an  Archbishop  who  exercised 
the  strictest  rights  of  visitation  throughout  all  dioceses,  and 
was  also  an  official  minister  of  the  Crown.     "  Fo7ir  gagner 
rhumanite"   says   Joubert,   *^il  fant  etre  aimable."     Now, 
Laud  was  "  to  those  men  that  loved  him,  sweet  as  summer  "  : 
so  were  Pius  IX.  and  Cardinal  Manning.     But  Leo  XHL 
and  Cardinal  Newman  are  universally  loved  and  cherished ; 
so,  in  past   days,  were  the  Anglican  prelates,  Andrewes, 
Wilson,  Ken.     "  His  heat,  fussiness,  and  arbitrary  temper," 
wrote  Mr.  Arnold  of  Laud.     It  is  sadly  true.     For  perhaps 
the  two  fairest  "  characters  "  of  him  we  turn  to  Clarendon 
and  Hume  ;  and  they  tell  the  same  tale.     Heroic  old  man, 
saintly  and  chivalrous,  strong  and  beautiful  in  his  death ; 
but  not  to  all  men^  and  of  sheer  necessity,  lovable.    All 


234  POST   LIMINIUM 

through  his  life,  from  Oxford  to  Tower  Hill,  friends  caress- 
ingly, and  foes  contemptuously,  called  him  "  little  Laud." 
What  was  true  of  his  bodily  stature,  was  true,  in  a  measure, 
of  his  intellectual.  It  is,  perhaps,  the  supreme  glory  of  a 
great  man  that  he  can  appreciate  his  enemies,  as  Crom- 
well unquestionably  did.  Laud  was  surprised  at  them, 
irritated  by  them.  "  Order,"  says  Guizot,  "  always  seemed 
to  him  justice ; "  and  to  enforce  order,  he  dispensed  with 
all  conciliatory  tact.  And  so,  as  the  Cavalier  poet  Cleve- 
land has  it,  "The  State  in  Strafford  fell,  the  Church  in 
Laud."  Unlike  Wolsey  or  Richelieu,  he  studied  to  serve 
his  God  while  serving  his  King,  God's  minister  of  State ; 
but  spiritual  sympathy  with  God's  people,  through  all  their 
errors,  was  far  from  him.  Intensely  English,  he  cherished 
his  obstinacy  as  a  virtue,  and  had  no  dramatic  intuition 
into  the  wants  and  necessities  of  other  souls ;  for  truth,  in 
its  rigidity  and  harshness,  unsoftened  and  unsweetened  to 
win  assent,  he  was  willing  to  die,  with  a  non  possnmtis  in 
answer  to  every  thought  of  even  innocent  concession.  His 
latest  biographers  give  us  the  man  at  his  best;  and  it  is 
the  portrait  of  one  "  ever  a  fighter  "  without  fear,  as  reso- 
lute as  "  lion  Eliot "  himself.  It  were  of  small  use  to 
lament  over  his  mistakes,  and  to  dream  of  what  might 
have  been  in  Church  and  State.  A  great  death  is  a  national 
treasure,  be  it  the  crown  of  however  mistaken  a  life.  Not 
the  Anglican  Church  only,  but  every  body  of  Protestants 
in  England,  is  the  stronger  for  him ;  his  blood  has  been 
"  the  seed  "  of  the  one,  his  sternness  has  but  heartened 
the  others.  Cupio  dissolvi  et  esse  cmn  Christo  was  his  dying 
desire.     And  so  let  us  leave  him. 


A   WORD   ABOUT  THACKERAY  235 

A  WORD   ABOUT   THACKERAY 

{The  Academy:  March  7,  1 891.] 
There  are  two  points  upon  which  it  may  be  worth  while 
to  say  something  :  the  satire  of  Thackeray,  and  his  art. 
Either  is  constantly  misunderstood^  and  without  dogma- 
tising on  the  matter,  one  may  try  to  clear  it  from  prejudice 
and  misconception.  It  is  commonly  held  by  the  unreflect- 
ing that  your  satirist  is  bitter,  your  humourist  a  jester.  Men 
talk  of  Thackeray's  cynicism  and  of  Lamb's  merriment,  as 
though  the  one  has  no  sympathies  and  the  other  no  sorrows. 
Before  Carlyle  and  Landor  wrote,  men  talked  of  Dante's 
savagery  and  scorn.  It  is  as  though  a  writer  must  needs 
be  a  man  of  iron,  without  "bowels  of  mercy,"  unless  he 
show  himself  lachrymose  and  sentimental.  And  yet  there 
are  "  thoughts  which  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears."  Mr. 
Pater  has  written  excellently,  as  he  always  writes,  upon  this 
matter  : 

"  The  author  of  the  English  Humourists  of  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
coming  to  the  humourists  of  the  nineteenth,  would  have  foun^,  as  is 
true  pre-eminently  of  Thackeray  himself,  ^the  springs  of  pity  in  them 
deepened  by  the  deeper  subjectivity,  the  intenser  and  closer  living  with 
itself,  which  is  characteristic  of  the  temper  of  the  later  generation  ; 
and  therewith,  the  mirth  also,  from  the  amalgam  of  which  with  pity 
humour  proceeds,  has  become  in  Charles  Dickens,  for  example,  freer 
and  more  boisterous." 

As  mere  matter  of  fact,  laughter  and  tears,  humour  and 
pity,  satire  and  pathos,  lie  very  near  each  other;  so  near 
that  Heine  and  Sterne  pass  from  one  to  the  other  by  some 
sort  of  natural  instinct,  and  often  labour  to  expose  the  fact 
unhappily.  Thackeray,  in  his  lightest  social  satire,  mordant 
and  stinging,  does  more  than  strip  a  pretension  or  ridicule 
an  absurdity.  Under  the  brilliant  wit  and  superb  scorn  lies 
the  haunting  thought  of  pity  for  "  man,  the  admirable,  the 
pitiable."  He  has  distinguished  between  the  attitudes  of 
Swift,  Addison,  and  Steele  towards  humanity  :  the  terrible 


236  POST    LIMINIUM 

contempt  of  Swift,  the  pensive  serenity  of  Addison,  the 
simple  tenderness  of  Steele.  Combine  the  three,  and  there 
is  Thackeray  :  too  clear-sighted  to  accept  delusions,  too 
reverent  to  despair,  too  kindly  to  be  always  glad.  .  .  . 

Dr.  John  Brown,  in  his  noble  tribute  to  Thackeray  at  the 
great  man's  death,  records  a  scene  which  seems  as  charac- 
teristic of  its  recorder  as  of  its  theme.  Thackeray  and  two 
friends  were  walking  outside  Edinburgh,  under  an  evening 
sky  of  loveliest  delicacy  : 

"  The  northwest  end  of  Corstorphine  Hill,  with  its  trees  and  rocks, 
lay  in  the  heart  of  this  pure  radiance  ;  and  a  wooden  crane,  used  in  the 
quarry  below,  was  so  placed  as  to  assume  the  figure  of  a  cross  :  there 
it  was,  unmistakable,  lifted  up  against  the  crystalline  sky.  As  they 
gazed,  he  gave  utterance  in  a  tremulous,  gentle,  and  rapid  voice,  to 
what  all  were  feeling,  in  the  word  :  '  Calvary  ! '  The  friends  walked 
on  in  silence,  and  then  turned  to  other  things.  All  that  evening  he 
was  very  gentle  and  serious,  speaking  (as  he  seldom  did)  of  divine 
things  ;  of  death,  of  sin,  of  eternity,  of  salvation  ;  expressing  his  simple 
faith  in  God  and  in  his  Saviour." 

There,  surely,  is  a  touching  thing  told  touchlngly.  .  .  . 
Turning   once   more    to   Mr.    Pater,    we   read    in    two 
passages  of 

"  that  old-world  sentiment,  based  on  the  feelings  of  hope  and  awe, 
which  may  be  described  as  the  religion  of  men  of  letters  .  .  .  religion 
as  understood  by  the  soberer  men  of  letters  in  the  last  century,  Addison, 
Gray,  and  Johnson  ;  by  Jane  Austen  and  Thackeray,  later." 

After  pages  of  literally  tremendous  denunciation  and 
scorn,  Thackeray  brings  us  back  to  the  universal  and  ele- 
mentary affections,  pity  and  charity,  and  hope,  in  words, 
as  Mr.  Lang  has  noted,  of  incomparable  music  and  beauty. 
And  this,  not  out  of  a  weak  concession  to  sentiment,  but 
because  it  is  verifiable  and  true,  the  testimony  of  experience. 
Nothing  could  be  less  true  than  the  assertion  of  M.  Taine : 

"II  fait  dans  le  roman  ce  que  Hobbes  fit  en  philosophic.  Presque 
toujours,  lorsqu'il  decrit  de  beaux  sentiments,  il  les  derive  d'unevilaine 
source." 


A   WORD   ABOUT   THACKERAY  237 

It  is  precisely  because  Thackeray,  discerning  so  well  the 
abundant  misery  and  hollowness  in  life,  discerns  also  all 
that  is  not  miserable  and  hollow,  that  he  is  so  great.  He 
has  neither  the  somewhat  bestial  pessimism  of  M.  Zola,  nor 
the  fatuous  gaiety  of  M,  Ohnet.  Like  any  classic,  he 
stands  the  test  of  experience,  of  psychology.  We  have 
mentioned  together  Swift,  Addison,  and  Steele ;  we  might 
take  Lucretius,  Virgil,  and  Horace.  Each  has  left  a  picture 
of  patrician  life,  glittering  and  tedious.  Lucretius,  contrasting 
the  splendour  without  and  the  gloom  within ;  Virgil,  the 
restlessness  and  haste  with  the  placid  peace  of  the  country ; 
Horace,  content  to  let  it  all  go  by,  neither  envying  nor 
despising.  Something  of  each,  again,  is  in  Thackeray,  an 
English  classic  not  less  true  and  real  than  the  classic 
Romans. 

Most  of  the  disputes  about  Thackeray's  art,  in  the  strict 
sense  of  art,  are  occupied  with  the  personal  note  in  his 
novels  :  with  the  intrusion,  as  some  call  it,  of  his  personality. 
Art,  we  are  told,  is  impersonal;  and  we  beUeve  it.  But 
if  that  imply  that  no  novel  should  reflect  its  author's  spirit, 
then  no  artistic  novel  has  yet  been  written.  It  is  a  question 
of  words  :  each  writer  has  his  manner  of  work  and  habit  of 
mind ;  let  him  follow  those  faithfully,  and  the  result  will  be 
good,  if  he  be  an  artist.  Who  wishes  away  Fielding's 
enchanting  chapters  between  the  books  of  Tom/ofies  ?  Or 
who  wishes  to  find  essays  by  Flaubert  between  the  chapters 
of  Madame  Bovary  'i  Each  follows  his  own  way,  and  there 
are  many  ways  in  art.  Thackeray's  reflections  and  dis- 
cussions do  not  spoil  his  story,  because  they  are  not  mere 
moralising,  which  the  reader  might  do  for  himself.  When- 
ever a  reader  stops,  and  says  to  himself  that  the  writer 
might  have  credited  his  readers  with  wits  enough  to  see 
such  and  such  a  thing,  without  being  shown  it,  then  the 
writer  has  been  superfluous.  A  sentence  instead  of  a  word, 
a  chapter  instead  of  a  page,  are  unpardonable  sins  :  but  who 
can  say,  that  he  could  have  done  Thackeray's  reflections 


238  POST    LIMINIUM 

for  himself?  And  they  do  not  occur  m  the  course  of  actual 
narration :  Rawdon  Crawley  confronts  Lord  Steyne,  Lady 
Castlewood  welcomes  Esmond  at  Winchester,  without  any 
dissertation  from  Thackeray.  At  least,  let  us  call  these 
passages  of  personal  meditation  a  wrong  thing  done  ex- 
quisitely :  beyond  that  we  refuse  to  go. 

Let  us  end  with  a  letter  of  Newman,  published  since  his 
death  :  a  voice  from  the  dead,  one  immortal  upon  another : 

' '  I  write  ...  to  express  the  piercing  sorrow  that  I  feel  in 
Thackeray's  death.  You  know  I  never  saw  him,  but  you  have  inter- 
ested me  in  him,  and  one  saw  in  his  books  the  workings  of  his  mind  ; 
and  he  has  died  with  such  awful  suddenness,  A  new  work  of  his  had 
been  advertised,  and  I  had  looked  forward  with  pleasure  to  reading 
it ;  and  now  the  drama  of  his  life  is  closed,  and  he  himself  is  the 
greatest  instance  of  the  text  of  which  he  was  so  full,  vanitas  vanitatttm, 
omnia  vanitas  .  .  .  What  a  world  this  is  !  How  wretched  they  are 
who  take  it  for  their  portion  !  " 

"Qualibus  in  tenebris  vitae  quantisque  periclis 
Degitur  hoc  aevi  quodcum quest !  " 

Thackeray  and  Newman  both  knew  that :  but  that  was 
not  all  they  knew. 

COVENTRY   PATMORE'S   GENIUS* 

[The  Daily  Chronicle,  October  22,  1900,] 

The  "  crested  and  prevailing  name  "  of  Coventry  Patmore 
stands  for  diverse  things  to  diverse  men ;  his  was  a  mind  of 
almost  laughable  simplicity  and  consistency,  yet  no  two 
men,  appreciating  it  either  from  the  experience  of  personal 
intimacy,  or  from  the  study  of  his  work,  would  portray  and 
interpret  it  alike.  .  .  . 

Mr.  Patmore  had  no  adventures  but  those  of  the  mind 
and  spirit ;  his  biography  is  the  record,  often  vastly  amusing, 
often  vastly  exasperating,  of  one  who  lived  for  high  and 
invisible  realities,  and  amid  the  commerce  and  pressure  of 

*  Memoirs  and  Correspondence  of  Coventry  Patmore.  By  Basil 
Champneys,     2  vols.     London  :  Bell  and  Sons,  1900. 


COVENTRY    PATMORE's    GENIUS  239 

the  phenomenal  world,  wherein  he  was  no  helpless  dreamer, 
was  always  in  touch  with  the  hidden  things  of  faith.  His 
poetry  was  a  devotion,  his  sense  of  art  was  worship,  his  way 
through  life  was  upward.  A  terribly  sensitive  and  strong 
man,  he  centred  and  concentrated  his  energies  upon  the 
apprehension  and  expression  of  the  divine  secrets  which 
explain  the  human  mysteries  :  secrets  few,  but  sufficing. 
Inspiration  is  no  vain  word  to  use  concerning  him,  and  to 
himself  his  imaginings  were  verities  for  which  he  was  not 
responsible,  but  grateful,  with  a  joyous  fear  and  trembling. 
His  loves  and  hates  were  necessary  and  essential,  part  of 
his  duty  towards  eternal  truth ;  he  might  have  cried,  with 
Augustine :  "  If  we  be  deceived,  it  is  by  Thee  we  are 
deceived  "  ;  or,  with  a  later  divine  not  dear  to  him  :  "  Here 
stand  I !  God  help  me,  I  cannot  otherwise."  Beauty  was 
no  beauty  to  him,  unless,  according  to  the  famous  definition, 
it  was  indeed  splendor  veritatls,  truth  in  the  glory  of  its 
shining.  Authority  is  stamped  upon  his  work,  which  made 
no  compromises  with  the  desires  of  weaklings  or  the 
ignorances  of  fools.  His  poetry  was  an  action,  a  service,  a 
deed  for  truth. 

"  Therefore  no  plaint  be  mine 
Of  listeners  none, 

No  hope  of  rendered  use  or  proud  reward, 
In  hasty  times  or  hard  ; 
But  chants  as  of  a  lonely  thrush's  throat 
At  latest  eve, 

That  does  in  each  calm  note 
Both  joy  and  grieve  : 
Notes  few  and  strong  and  fine, 
Gilt  with  sweet  day's  decline, 
And  sad  with  promise  of  a  different  sun." 

Mr.  Patmore  and  his  poems  were  "  insolent,"  but  in  the 
brave  Elizabethan  sense  of  the  word;  proud  with  the 
just  pride  of  clear  vision  and  Uranian  compulsion  to 
utterance.  ...  A  character  so  definite,  a  temperament  so 
unique  fill  us  with  delight :    the  mystic,  bathing  his  soul  in 


240  POST   LIMINIUM 

the  poetry  of  Catholic  theology ;   the  ferocious  politician, 
whose  superior  Toryism  scorned  that  of  "  the  false  English 
nobles   and  their  Jew " ;    the  man  of  ascetic  silence  and 
monstrous  jests  and  smiling  arrogances,  whose  intolerance 
was  "  very  tolerable  and  not  to  be  endured  "!..."  T'he 
greatest  genius  of  the  century,"  says  Mr.  Francis  Thompson. 
Be  that  as  it  may,  and  the  assertion  does  not  startle  us,  it 
is  very  certain  that  Patmore,  the  friend  of  Carlyle,  Ruskin, 
Newman,  Tennyson,  Rossetti,  Browning,  was  at  least  the 
intellectual  equal  of  them  all,  though  he  deliberately  did 
much  that  prevented  the  world  from  thinking  so.     He  was 
not  always  justified  or  judicious  in  his  manner  of  saying, 
with  Landor,  "  I  know  not  whether  I  am  proud.  But  this  I 
know :  I  hate  the  crowd."     Nor  in  his  manner  of  echoing 
Ben  Jonson's  resolve  to  "  sing  high  and  aloof,  Safe  from  the 
black  wolfs  jaw  and  the  dull  ass's  hoof."     A  public  which 
takes    The  Angel  in    the   House    for    a   mildly    pleasing 
domestic  tale  in  facile  verse,  and  The  Unknown  Eros  for  a 
cluster  of  obscurities  in  an  unknown  tongue,  will  scarce  agree 
with  Mr.  Thompson.    But  Mr.  Champneys'  biography  should 
do  much  towards  inducing  that  public  to  revise  its  verdicts, 
and  to  recognise  in  Mr.  Patmore,  if  not  all  that  his  best 
lovers  find  in  him,  yet  a  strenuous  and  victorious  servant  of 
poetry  in  the  highest,  of  faith  aflame.     That  "  distinction," 
which  he  so  greatly  loved  and  craved  in  life  and  art  (a  fine 
flower  within  the  reach  of  all,  and  not  the  ornament  of  an 
elect  class)  appears  in  his  dealings  with  the   commonest 
things ;  he  reverenced  humanity,  whence  he  inferred,  wherein 
he    discerned,   divinity.      His   fastidiousness   of    life,    his 
sometimes   extravagant   expression  of  it  sprang  from  the 
vehemence  of  his  personality,  from  a  half-humorous  con- 
viction that  he  did  well  to  be  angry  and  to   spare  not. 
Many  of  the  odes  of  The  Unknown  Eros  are  passionately 
compassionate,  and  tremulous  unto  tears  :   no  man  ever 
knew   with  a   profounder   knowledge   the    pangs    of   loss, 
dereliction,   desire,   sorrows   of  soul  and   body    in    their 


COVENTRY   PATMORe's   GENIUS  241 

mystical  conjunction.  But  a  severe  serenity,  a  radiant 
haughtiness,  a  righteous  impatience,  find  frequent  and 
emphatic  expression.  " Noli  me  tangerc"  he  has  said,  "  is 
the  only  favour  which  the  poet  also  seems  to  ask,  and 
which  does  not  tend  to  popularity."  The  spiritual  mystic, 
the  intellectual  aristocrat,  have  other  delights  than  that : 
the  author  of  those  challenging  and  defiant  works.  Principle 
in  Arl,  Rcligio  Poetae,  and  Rod^  Root,  and  Flower,  was  not 
ill-contented  to  dwell  apart  in  the  sphere  of  his  own 
delights,  ascending  the  Scala  Santa  of  saints  and  sages. 

Detachment  marked  him^  but  not  detachment  from  an 
abundance  of  such  worldy  interests  as  politics,  building, 
farming,  fishing,  to  which  he  brought  Carlylean  and  most 
virile  vigour.  His  home  life  is  described  by  Mr.  Champneys 
with  pleasant  humour,  and  reticence,  and  just  appreciation, 
in  pages  which  are  very  much  alive  :  the  man,  here  portrayed, 
will  charm  readers  whom  the  poet  may  puzzle.  The  special 
chapters  upon  members  of  his  family,  discreetly  written, 
serve  well  to  illustrate  the  finer  characteristics  of  his  life 
and  aims,  ardent,  resolute,  filled  with  much  joy  and  sorrow. 
But  it  is  not  a  biography  which  fairly  admits  of  quotation  : 
Mr.  Patmore's  life  and  nature  must  be  studied  as  a  whole, 
in  all  their  various  aspects.  It  would  be  easy  to  present 
strongly-marked  partial  views  of  him,  all  true,  but  not  the 
whole  truth  :  a  few  anecdotes,  chosen  at  random,  would 
do  no  sort  of  justice  to  his  apparently  paradoxical,  but 
essentially  consistent,  character,  in  which  piety  was  on  the 
easiest  terms  with  humour,  passion  with  playfulness,  fieriness 
with  tenderness,  spirituality  with  worldliness.  It  is  both  a 
lofty  and  a  whimsical  figure,  to  be  contemplated  with 
admiration  and  amusement  and  a  very  human  sympathy : 
the  figure  of  a  veiled  prophet,  yet  an  intimate  friend  :  a 
poet  of  sublimities  and  things  celestial  which  came  laugh- 
ing from  his  lips,  but  only  after  long  silences  of  meditation 
and  waiting  upon  the  heavenly  vision.  An  Englishman  to 
the  core,  his  perceptions  of  reality  and  truth  were  not  those 

R 


242  POST   LIMINIUM 

readily  intelligible  to  his  contemporary  compatriots,  whom 
he  could  chide,  but  not  conciliate :  his  first  duty  was  to  the 
integrity  of  his  own  intellectual  conscience ;  and  in  matters 
of  religion,  of  art,  of  the  body  politic,  he  uttered  many  a 
11071  possumus,  even  in  reply  to  the  pleas  and  remonstrances 
of  friends.  He  loved  truth,  asjhe  discerned  truth,  in  its 
audacity,  "  terrible  as  an  army  with  banners "  :  he  could 
keep  silence,  he  could  not  soften  speech  into  smooth 
insinuations  of  the  truth.  A  great  part  of  his  work,  in 
poetry  and  in  prose,  is  militant  and  menacing :  distastefully 
so  to  dissenters  in  all  points  from  his  beliefs.  By  no  means 
a  comfortable  writer,  whose  views  we  can  ignore  in  our 
enjoyment  of  his  art :  we  are  forced  to  take  a  side,  and  in 
most  matters  the  English  world  is  not  upon  Patmore's  side. 
He,  indeed,  was  fond  of  asserting  that  "  there  are  not  '  two 
sides  to  every  question,'  nor,  indeed,  to  any."  A  nation 
enamoured  of  compromise  and  concession,  and  "  compre- 
hensiveness "  and  "  give  and  take,"  will  hardly  take  to  its 
heart  the  least  condescending,  the  most  assertive  writer  of 
our  times,  Carlyle  and  Ruskin  not  excepted.  But  we 
repeat  that  Mr.  Champneys  has  done  much  to  present  him 
to  a  somewhat  alien  public,  not  indeed  toned  down  and 
conventionalised,  yet  in  a  winning,  clear,  and  amiable  light. 
Born  in  1823,  he  died  in  1896:  from  early  youth  he 
lived  the  literary  life  with  an  ardent  devotion  and  a  singular 
independence,  not  swerving  from  his  deliberate  way,  not 
dallying  with  any  popular  fashions,  not  intimidated  by  any 
misconstruction,  ridicule,  or  neglect.  Nor,  except  upon  the 
score  of  material  profit,  had  he  cause  to  complain,  who, 
beginning  with  the  young  pre-Raphaelites,  never  lacked  the 
applause  of  his  brethren,  and  the  joy  laudari  a  Imidatis. 
He  had  letters  of  cordial,  even  of  superlative  praise  from 
the  illustrious  friends  whom  we  have  mentioned,  as  also 
from  Mr.  Aubrey  de  Vere,  Mr.  Robert  Bridges,  Mr.  Austin 
Dobson,  and  other  living  poets  of  eminence ;  from  the  late 
Cardinals  Newman  and  Manning,  Sir  Henry  Taylor,  Woolner, 


COVENTRY   PATMORE's    GENIUS  243 

and  Allingham,  the  first  Lord  Houghton,  Bell  Scott,  Emer- 
son ;  with  many  more.  But  it  is  noticeable  that  the  truest 
appreciation  of  his  work,  its  order  of  ideas,  comes  from 
fellow-Catholics :  from  a  Franciscan  versed  in  mystical 
theology;  from  a  brilliant  young  Jesuit  poet,  "dead  ere 
his  prime " ;  from  Mr.  de  Vere,  much  of  whose  poetry  is 
own  cousin  to  Patmore's ;  from  one  of  his  daughters,  a  nun. 
These  knew  what  he  knew,  felt  what  he  felt,  moved  in  the 
same  or  in  a  similar  sphere  of  Catholic  experience;  for 
these,  though  "in  a  strange  land,"  this  was  "the  Lord's 
song."  Patmore's  creed  can  never  be  overlooked  in  the 
consideration  of  his  poems,  even  of  those  preceding  his 
conversion  to  Catholicism  ;  in  a  (ew  autobiographical  pages, 
now  first  published,  he  describes  that  change,  which,  in  a 
sense,  was  no  change,  but  the  crowning  of  old  convictions 
by  the  hand  of  authority.  As  a  Catholic,  he  found  no  rash 
or  erroneous  phrase  or  thought  in  The  A7igdin  the  House ; 
the  one  central  fact  of  love  human  and  divine,  with  its  in- 
calculable corollaries,  which  was  to  him  the  justification  of 
faith  and  the  interpretation  of  life,  was  there  celebrated  in 
language  less  august,  but  not  less  true,  than  that  of  the  Odes, 
where  the  flight  is  higher,  the  light  more  "  clear-obscure." 

"  Views  of  the  unveil'd  heavens  alone  forth  bring 
Prophets  who  cannot  sing, 
Praise  that  in  chiming  numbers  will  not  run  : 
At  least,  from  David  unto  Dante,  none, 
And  none  since  him." 

But  if  Patmore  forgot  Calderon,  we  do  not  forget  Patmore ; 
who,  to  the  fires  and  fervours  of  Crashaw,  added  a  spiritual 
learning,  unknown  to  that  seraphic  poet,  and  is  the  chief 
poet  of  modern  Catholicism,  the  chief  priest  of  sacred  song. 
It  separates  him  from  his  most  famous  friends  among 
English  writers  of  the  century,  and  prevents  his  just  accep- 
tation ;  it  is  impossible  to  prophesy  the  future  of  the  fame 
of  such  a  man.  Should,  to  use  a  current  French  phrase, 
"  the  bankruptcy  of  science "  become  more  and  more  an 


244  POST    LIMINIUM 

accomplished  fact,  it  may  be  that  his  chaunted  doctrines  will 
work  their  way  into  minds  emptied  of  their  old  principles, 
and  fill  up  the  painful  void :  it  may  be  that  his  peculiar 
music  and  mastery  of  metre  would  count  for  much  in  "  the 
poetry  of  the  future."  At  present  it  cannot  be  said  that 
Coventry  Patmore  holds  de  facto  that  place  in  the  public 
estimation  which  is  his  dejicre. 

"  I  love  you,  dear,  but  the  Lord  is  my  Life  and  my 
Light,"  were  his  dying  words  to  his  wife :  and  "  but "  might 
have  been  "  therefore." 

From  first  to  last  he  sang  the  mystical  glory  and  meaning 
of  the  most  sacred  among  human  relationships,  fearlessly 
and  simply ;  the  heights  of  humanity  were  the  starting-point 
of  his  song.  That  also  must  make  for  permanence.  But 
it  is  hard  to  write  of  him  :  at  every  turn  of  his  life,  on  every 
page  of  his  writings,  we  find  ourselves  in  presence  of  human 
and  divine  relationships,  entered  into  by  himself  with  an 
intense  simplicity  and  purity  of  heart,  but  hardly  to  be 
spoken  of  by  others,  nor  dwelt  upon  but  with  anxious 
delicacy.  It  is  good  to  bear  in  mind  that  this  poet  and 
prophet  of  such  mysteries,  self-dedicated  by  his  own  genius 
to  their  exaltation,  had  nothing  of  that  morbid  or  hectic 
quality  which  is  so  often  the  danger  of  the  mystic.  In  this 
book  there  is  the  dweller  upon  the  heights :  there  is  also 
the  man  who  could  say  to  its  writer :  "  I  said  seven  Aves 
for  you  to  catch  that  fish ! "  and  the  man  who  had  an 
exemplary  relish  of  "  creature  comforts,"  of  practical  occupa- 
tions, of  every-day  life  in  the  land,  with  its  pungent  political 
pessimism  foredoomed  to  damnation ;  the  man  who  wrote 
not  only  of  the  heavenliest  sanctities,  but  also  "  How  I 
Managed  and  Improved  my  Estate,"  and  trenchant 
"  topical "  articles  for  his  friend  Mr.  Frederick  Green- 
wood. Like  almost  all  the  greater  saints  of  his  Church, 
he  loved  laughter  and  epigram,  and  truth  fortified  with 
jesting  :  he  prized  the  discipline  of  sorrow,  but  he  loathed 
melancholy.     "  For  all  things  there  is  a  time,"  and  when 


MARIE   BASHKIRTSEFF  245 

it  was  not  his  time  for  the  higher  and  the  hidden  things  he 
had  no  contempt  for  the  lower,  which,  after  all,  are  not 
low.  And,  finally,  it  is  not  only  in  these  -welcome  pages 
that  the  whole  man  is  to  be  found :  he  is  in  his  noblest 
work,  where  awe  encourages  delight,  and  eternal  strength 
quickens  temporal  weakness.  The  breadth  and  happy 
peace  and  flying  radiance  of  the  skies  are  in  his  poetry, 
and  airs  of  Paradise  regained.  Some  great  poetry  has  been 
written  in  his  time,  but  none  of  more  refined  a  music,  of 
more  impassioned  a  sincerity,  of  more  beautiful  a  wisdom. 


MARIE   BASHKIRTSEFF 

[The  And- Jacobin,  Oct.  10,  1 89 1.] 
Had  the  diaries  and  letters  of  Mdlle.  Bashkirtseff  been  the 
work  of  another  woman,  she  would  have  criticised  them 
something  in  this  manner  : — "  I  have  read  the  celebrated 
diary,  the  wonderful  letters.  Oh,  the  happy  woman  !  To 
long,  long,  long  for  things  all  her  life,  and  to  die  of  con- 
sumption !  the  beautiful  death !  at  twenty-three  !  That  is 
my  idea  of  success  in  this  terrible  world.  To  long  pas- 
sionately for  fame,  adoration,  triumph ;  and  to  die  before 
she  found  out  that  there  is  nothing,  nothing,  nothing,  in  all 
the  world  !  I  am  mad  with  jealousy.  Oh,  my  God  !  help 
me,  Thou  !  That  is  quite  a  simple  prayer.  They  have  not 
sent  home  my  white  dress,  and  to-night  the  Prince  will 
think  me  hideous  :  he,  with  his  drooping  moustache  and 
pale  brow  !  Oh  !  the  poor  girl  that  I  am.  And  she,  the 
other,  had  so  much  !  And  Aunt  Mary  has  actually  for- 
gotten to  have  the  dogs  washed." 

The  journal  and  the  letters  of  Mdlle.  Bashkirtseff  have 
won  the  admiration  of  this  singular  age  by  utterances  pre- 
cisely in  that  tone  and  style.  So  frank,  so  fearless,  so 
human,  so  true  :  veritable  records  of  a  mind  touched  by  all 
our  modern  influences  :   those  wonderful  influences  which 


246  POST   LIMINIUM 

no  one  \vill  be  good  enough  to  explain,  which  every  one 
"in  the  movement"  is  only  too  anxious  to  experience. 
After  reading  these  volumes,  the  poor  disbeliever  in  the 
movement  is  left  with  a  sense  of  profound  disgust.  Silly 
petulance,  ill-bred  ostentation,  unfathomable  conceit, 
offensive  vulgarity,  and  no  trace  of  affection  or  of  thought : 
these  are  the  gifts  and  qualities  which  we  are  called  upon 
to  study  and  to  admire.  Fine  phrases  are  invented  for  it : 
the  revelation  of  a  soul,  the  true  history  of  a  modern  mind, 
the  exhibition  in  all  their  crudity  of  passions  and  desires, 
hopes  and  despairs,  which  modesty  or  shame  is  accustomed 
to  conceal.  Few  persons  have  gone  to  the  extreme  of  ask- 
ing us  to  admire  Mdlle.  Bashkirtseff :  she  was  vain,  foolish, 
and  so  forth  :  but  then  she  did  not  mind  saying  so  !  And 
the  spectacle  of  a  young  Russian  lady  suffering  the  maladie 
de  siecle,  and  boldly  exposing  its  symptoms  to  the  world, 
is  a  spectacle  that  appeals  to  our  sympathies  or  excites  our 
curiosity.  So  say  the  wise  teachers  of  our  time.  But  apart 
from  the  sorry  taste  evinced  in  admiration  of  these  v/ritings, 
we  can  but  wonder  at  the  surprise  and  excitement  felt  over 
them.  For  the  explanation  of  their  character  is  perfectly 
simple,  and  nothing  new.  Every  man,  by  the  natural  con- 
stitution of  his  mind,  thinks  about  his  thoughts,  and  not  only 
is  conscious  of  his  emotions,  but  has  a  further  consciousness 
of  that  consciousness.  Take  a  man  at  his  devotions,  a  man 
of  real  and  simple  religious  nature  :  he  performs  them  with 
perfect  sincerity,  but  he  is  also  conscious  of  his  devotional 
emotion,  as  though  hq  were  a  dispassionate  critic  outside 
himself.  Look  at  a  beautiful  scene  or  work  of  art :  you 
genuinely  admire  and  enjoy,  but  you  also  reflect  upon  your 
admiration  and  enjoyment.  And  the  process  may  be 
indefinitely  prolonged.  A  man  who  is  perpetually  analysing 
his  motives,  thinking  of  his  thoughts,  examining  his  emotions, 
runs  a  fair  chance  of  becoming  imbecile  :  but  the  process 
is  none  the  less  a  natural  one.  Some  years  ago  a  Catholic 
priest  wrote  an  account  of  his  novitiate  in  a  religious  order. 


MARIE   BASHKIRTSEFF  247 

At  the  ceremony  of  profession  it  was  customary  for  the  prior 
to  crown  the  professed  with  white  flowers.  The  writer  says  : 
"  Even  at  that  solemn  moment  the  ludicrous  could  not  be 
entirely  banished,  and  the  thought  of  my  bald  head  and 
grizzled  tonsure  called  up  irresistibly  thoughts  of  Greek 
philosophers  at  a  symposium,  and  inspired  me  with  a  frantic 
desire  to  conclude  the  ceremony."  That  is  innocent  enough, 
but  to  encourage  this  natural  tendency  of  reflection  till  it 
becomes  a  very  torment  of  perpetual  self-consciousness,  is 
sure  to  end  in  an  unnatural  state  of  mind.  Mdlle.  Bash- 
kirtseff,  being  by  nature  quick  and  keen  of  mind,  became, 
in  sober  truth,  a  monomaniac,  unable  to  think  of  anything 
but  herself.  In  her  art,  her  dress,  her  acquaintance,  her 
every  thought  and  feehng,  she  was  consumed  with  a  passion 
for  analysing  her  motives  and  emotions,  for  appearing 
effective,  for  creating  a  situation.  So  that  in  her  journal 
and  letters  there  is  not  one  single  line  of  simple,  unsophisti- 
cated writing.  Yet  we  are  told  of  her  spontaneous,  genuine, 
frank  confessions  :  of  her  yearning  for  a  great  life,  for  fame, 
for  manifold  experience.  Hers  is  only  a  case  of  childish 
precocity,  bad  training,  and  consequent  craziness. 

She  visits  Pere  Didon,  the  great  Dominican.  "  One 
would  like  to  see  him  with  a  moustache.  One  can  see 
plainly  that  he  is  fully  aware  of  his  popularity,  that  he  is 
accustomed  to  adoration;  that  he  is  sincerely  delighted 
with  the  sensation  he  creates  everywhere ! "  So  naive  I 
and  so  penetrating  1  She  goes  to  confession  :  and  because 
it  was  "  singular "  she  records  its  details  in  her  diary  with 
a  positive  relish.  She  writes  to  her  mother  :  "  I  am  going 
to  tell  you  about  my  childish  doings.  This  morning  I  went 
for  a  walk  and  entered  a  Catholic  church,  i  availed  myself 
of  the  absolute  solitude  of  the  place  to  go  up  into  the  pulpit, 
to  go  into  the  choir,  to  go  on  the  altar  "  (surely  a  mis- 
translation here),  "  and  to  read  the  prayers  placed  on  the 
tablet  of  the  altar :  I  did  all  this  by  way  of  prayer,  for  I 
have  a  multitude  of  projects  in  which  I  need  the  assistance 


248  POST    LIMINIUM 

of  Heaven,  But  the  thought  that  I  have  read  a  Mass 
transports  me  !  Only  think,  I  rang  the  bell  as  the  priests 
do  during  Mass  ! "  (They  do  not :  but  no  matter.)  "  At 
all  events  my  intentions  were  not  bad." 

So  much  for  Mdlle.  Bashkirtseff  s  religion,  which  does  not 

seem  to  have  been  one  of  her  more  cherished  emotions. 

It  is  in  her  letters  to  her  relatives,  mother,  grandfather, 

brother,  that  the  perfection  of  her  trivial  selfishness  appears. 

She  informs  a  friend  that ''  Mamma  was  very  good  to-day. 

In  the  end  I  really  believe  I  shall  grow  fond  of  her."     She 

leaves  her  mother  to  go  to  Paris^  against  her  mother's  wish. 

"  I  am  a  naughty  girl;  I  left  my  mother,  saying  I  was  delighted 

to  depart  with  my  uncle.     That  made  her  feel  unhappy, 

and  people  do  not  know  how  much  I  love  her,  and  they 

judge  me  by  appearances.     Oh  !  according  to  appearances 

I   am   not   very   affectionate."      That   is   very   true :    her 

affections  never  display  themselves  in  deeds.     She  leaves 

her   grandfather   without   taking   any   notice  of  him,  and 

explains  that  she  did  it  in  her  hurry  to  get  away.     She 

worries  her  aunt  with  perpetual  clamour   for  money,  and 

with  perpetual  commissions  about  her  dresses  and  her  dogs. 

To  her  father  :  "  You  have  always  been  prejudiced  against 

me,  although  I  have  never  done  anything  to  justify  such  a 

feeling  on  your  part.    I  have  never  lost  the  love  and  esteem 

for  you,  however,  which  every  well-born  girl  owes  to  her 

father."     To  her  brother  she  sends  an  elaborate  description 

of  her  dress :  "  A  gown  of  a  clinging  and  elastic  material 

that  modestly  revealed  the  outUne  of  my  figure "  :    "  you 

should  be  proud,  my  dear  boy,  to  have  a  sister  like  me." 

But  the  most  unpleasant  things  in  the  book  are  her  accounts 

of  men  and  of  her  interest  in  them.     She  is  enchanted  with 

the  coarse  admiration  of  strangers  who  stare  at  her  in  the 

theatre,  or  follow  her  in  the  streets.     She  describes  them 

with  the  vulgar  silliness  of  a  romantic  shop-girl.     One  of 

them   "is    dark,   has   very   fine   eyes,   a    slight   drooping 

moustache,  a  velvety  skin,  such  as  I  do  not  think  I  have  ever 


MARIE    BASHKIRTSEFF  249 

before  seen  in  a  man ;  a  handsome  mouth,  a  regular  nose, 
neither  round  nor  pointed,  nor  aquiUne  nor  classic — a  nose 
of  which,  loo,  the  skin  is  delicate,  a  thing  which  is  exceed- 
ingly rare,"  etc.  Then  there  are  her  letters  to  distinguished 
writers  unknown  to  her,  more  foolish  and  impertinent  than 
one  could  have  thought  possible.  Of  Faust  she  writes 
that  "  the  subject  is  disgusting,  I  do  not  say  immoral, 
hideous  :  I  say  disgusting."  And  that  is  what  we  say  of  her 
letters.  They  disgust  us,  because  they  are  so  hopelessly 
foolish  and  so  unspeakably  undignified  :  so  full  of  petulant 
vanity  and  of  pretentious  affectation.  Arnold  said  of  a 
certain  letter  by  Keats^  that  "it  is  the  sort  of  love-letter  of 
a  surgeon's  apprentice  which  one  might  hear  read  out  in  a 
breach  of  promise  case,  or  in  the  Divorce  Court."  These 
letters  are  the  letters  of  an  hysterical  lady's-maid  in  point 
of  manner,  of  an  undisciplined  female  novelist  in  point  of 
matter.  To  paraphrase  Arnold,  "  they  have  in  their  relaxed 
self-abandonment  something  underbred  and  ignoble,  as  of 
a  girl  ill  brought  up,  without  the  training  which  teaches  us 
that  we  must  put  some  constraint  upon  our  feelings  and 
upon  the  expression  of  them."  And  Mdlle.  Bashkirtsefif 
was  very  badly  brought  up  :  that  is  obvious.  It  would  have 
been  a  saving  discipline  for  her  to  have  known  the  severity 
of  wise  parents,  or  even  of  cruel :  she  might  have  learned 
endurance,  if  not  reverence. 

To  those  Avho  affect  an  admiration  of  her  character  let 
us  suggest  the  question  :  What  would  life  become  were  most 
women  like  Mdlle.  BashkirtsefF?  Could  any  man  wish  to 
have  a  wife,  a  daughter,  a  sister,  like  her  ?  Is  it  for  her 
quahties  that  any  man  honours  and  loves  his  mother? 
PhiUstine  questions,  but  worth  asking.  And  if  the  answer 
must  be  No,  how  are  we  to  justify  this  fervent  interest  in  a 
diseased  and  silly  soul  ? 

Such  souls  are  merely  miserable,  pitiable  :  not  admirable 
nor  estimable.  It  is  in  vain  for  them,  as  Massillon  has  it, 
^^  se  consoler  d'lme  passion  par  n?ie  autre  passion  nouvelle  ; 


250  POST   LIMINIUM 

d''unc  pcrtc  par  nil  noiivcl  attachcmcnt ;  cVunc  disgrace  par 
de  nouvelles  esperances ;  Vamerttimc  les  suit  partout ;  ils 
changent  de  situation  jnais  ils  ne  chaiigcnt  pas  de  supplice" 
Some  lovers  of  extravagance  and  of  perversion  may  enjoy 
these  dismal  pages,  with  all  their  outcries  and  affectations  : 
to  those  who  love  the  natural  beauty  of  the  natural  mind, 
and  to  those  who  know  the  strength  and  sternness  of  a  real 
sorrow,  these  pages  must  seem  false  and  wretched,  and  the 
liking  for  them  a  melancholy  sign  of  disordered  times. 


'•FATHER    IZAAK" 

[The  speaker,  June  20,  1896.] 

BoswELL  and  Lockhart  hold,  by  common  consent,  the  first 
place  in  our  literature  as  biographers  upon  a  generous  and 
elaborate  scale  :  but  Izaak  Walton  is  our  prince  of  bio- 
graphers in  miniature.  It  is  wonderful  that  the  good 
citizen-tradesman  of  Fleet  Street  should  have  entered  so 
exquisitely  into  the  characters  of  these  aristocratic  priests 
and  poets,  these  profound  scholars  and  theologians,  these 
men  of  a  deeper  and  a  higher  life  than  his :  he  seems 
drawn  by  some  powerful  instinct  towards  elect  souls, 
towards  gracious,  distinguished,  and  ardent  natures,  which 
have  a  courtliness  in  their  piety.  He  never  could  have 
loved,  though  he  could  have  partly  respected,  the  tinker 
Bunyan,  or  the  political  dissenter  Defoe,  his  brother  writers 
of  homely  and  vivid  English:  he  required  more  than  a 
touch  of  comely  convention  in  his  heroes.  For  a  like 
reason,  he  could  not  have  wholly  comprehended  the  pas- 
sionate Catholic  converts  of  his  day,  with  their  fiery  fervours 
and  devoutnesses.  Extremes  distressed  the  good  quiet 
man  :  as  his  pleasant  meadows,  and  silver  streams,  and 
gentle  winds  suited  him  better  than  wild  storm  upon  moor 
or  mountain,  so,  too,  the  sober  decency  of  Anglicanism, 
the  graceful  side  of  Stuart  monarchy,  the  pleasing  dignity 


"father  izaak"  251 

and  moderate  enjoyments  of  an  ordered  and  measured 
life,  were  more  to  his  taste  than  your  ranting  fanaticism 
and  indecent  innovation.  There  is  something  in  him — 
yes,  positively ! — of  the  sweet,  old-fashioned,  gentle  old 
lady,  to  Avhom  "  the  modern  spirit "  is  a  thing  of  noise 
and  of  ill  manners,  and  who  "  cannot  understand  "  how 
anyone  can  wish  to  change  the  good  old  ways.  Father 
Izaak  has  just  such  an  one's  placid  charm  and  sometimes 
humorous  speech  :  the  shrewdness  of  a  prejudice  not  bitter, 
but  disarming.  And  Walton  loved  excellently  well,  choosing 
men  and  things  of  true  worth  to  praise  :  you  never  find  him 
worse  than  a  little  narrow  and  blind  in  an  innocent  way. 
Utterly  unlike  Carlyle  in  all  else,  he  had,  what  Carlyle 
noted  for  praise  in  Boswell,  the  instinctive  recognition  not 
only  of  a  great  but  of  a  good  man.  His  most  lovable  glow 
of  admiration  for  his  saintly  heroes  and  pious  gentlemen 
sets  one  thinking  of  Scott's  last  words  to  Lockhart :  "  Be 
a  good  man,  my  dear ! "  And,  good  as  were  Herbert, 
Hooker,  Wotton,  Sanderson,  Donne,  their  eulogist  was 
fully  as  good  himself,  and,  in  his  own  phrase  about  old 
songs,  "  choicely  good." 

He  is  among  the  prettiest  of  antique  writers,  with  his 
ingenuous  gossip,  his  charming  freshness,  his  touches  of 
singular  beauty,  his  perfect  rise  and  fall  between  eloquence 
and  colloquialism :  it  is  admirably  effective  writing  in  its 
simplicity  and  earnestness.  Not  one  of  the  Lives  was 
written  for  fame,  artistic  or  historic,  but  from  a  single- 
hearted  desire  to  preserve  and  embalm  the  memories  of 
worthies,  of  pattern  men,  exemplars  and  ensamples  of  "  holy 
living  and  holy  dying."  .  .  .  The  choice  of  anecdotes  and 
sayings,  the  personal  touches,  the  general  setting  of  the 
portraits,  produce  a  wonderful  effect  of  reality.  Five  men, 
all  ecclesiastics  and  scholars,  of  very  much  the  same  opinions 
in  Church  and  State  :  yet  their  points  of  dissimilarity  in 
agreement  are  made  manifest  with  no  common  cunning  : 
they  are  flesh  and  blood,  not  "characters."     Herbert  is 


252  POST   LIMINIUM 

Herbert,  not  the  "  country  parson  "  :  Wotton  is  himself,  no 
mere  type  of  the  courtly  and  accomplished  public  man. 
Take,  for   a  specimen  of  well-chosen  incident,  Wotton's 
journey  to  his  old  school,  Winchester,  the  last  year  of  his 
life  :  how  we  see  the  old  man,  with  years  and  honours  and 
cares  upon  him,  moralising  over  the  young  scholars  with 
a   smiling    sadness  !      Or    Herbert,   with   his    punctilious 
daintiness  of  attire,  soiling  and  disordering  it  in  his  succour 
of  the  poor  man's  horse  on  the  way  to  Salisbury  :  we  see 
him  enter  the  music-meeting  in  the  Close,  surprising  his 
friends  by  his  ruffled  appearance,  "  which  used  to  be  so 
trim  and  clean  "  :  we  hear  a  friend  reproach  him  for  "  dis- 
paraging himself  by  so   dirty   an   employment,"   and   his 
answer   that  "  the   thought  of  what  he   had  done  would 
prove  music  to  him  at  midnight/'  with  the  rest  of  his  little 
homily,  ending  in  "  and  now  let's  tune  our  instruments." 
And  the  marriage  of  injudicious  Hooker  !  for  quaint,  whole- 
some comedy  it  is  unsurpassed.     His  two  pupils  visit  him 
at  his  parsonage,  and  find  him  reading  Horace  in  the  field 
among  his  sheep,  his  wife  having  set  the  man  to  help  her 
in  the  house :  when  he  is  released,  and  they  go  indoors, 
"where  their  best  entertainment  was  his  quiet  company," 
they  fare  no  better,  "for  Richard  was  called  to  rock  the 
cradle ;  and  the  rest  of  their  welcome  was  so  like  this,  that 
they  stayed  but  till  next  morning,  which  was  time  enough 
to  discover  and  pity  their  tutor's  condition."     Henpecked 
Richard  rocking  the  cradle,  with  the  Ecclesiastical  Polity 
in   his    head,   and  his   domestic    polity   thus    deplorable  ! 
To  take  a  prettier  picture,  which  Mr.  Hardy  might  have 
painted,  imagine  Hooker  "  of  so  mild  and  humble  a  nature 
that  his  poor  parish  clerk  and  he  did  never  talk  but  with 
both  their  hats  on,  or  both  off,  at  the  same  time."     These 
are  but  the  little  sallies  and  relaxations  by  which  Walton 
humanises  and  brightens  his  serious  story :  he  has  no  lack 
of  concern  for  its  higher  side.     A  piece  of  quiet  humour 
is  like  his  angling,  no  chief  part  of  his  business,  but  a 


"  FATHER    IZAAK  253 

harmless  recreation.  What  he  most  sets  himself  to  display 
and  extol  is  the  humility,  meekness,  "  Christian  modera- 
tion," of  his  men  :  to  that  he  is  ever  recurring,  as  the  very 
salt  of  their  dispositions.  Donne  "  was  by  nature  highly 
passionate  "  :  Herbert,  so  his  deistical  brother  of  Cherbury 
tells  us,  was  "  not  exempt  from  passion  and  choler,  being 
infirmities  to  which  all  our  race  is  subject " ;  and  indeed, 
both  parson-poets  being  Welshmen,  we  can  well  beUeve 
it :  but  Walton  loves  to  show  them  triumphing  over  pride 
and  passion.  To  him,  cherishing  peace  and  goodwill  and 
cheerfulness,  the  stormy  times  must  have  been  sore  and 
sad :  and  to  deal  with  these  great  sweet  memories  of  "  holy 
and  humble  men  of  heart "  was  a  solace  and  a  fragrance. 
Each  "  Life  "  has  its  peculiar  charm.  Those  of  Herbert  and 
Donne,  as  beseems  divine  poets,  are  the  most  rich  in 
religious  emotion  :  the  live  coal  from  the  altar  has  touched 
the  writer's  lips.  Those  of  Hooker  and  Sanderson,  as 
becomes  massive  theologians,  one  magnificent  and  the 
other  eminent,  are  more  elaborate,  stately,  and  complete. 
That  of  Wotton,  courtier,  ambassador,  poet,  ecclesiastic, 
collegiate  dignitary,  is  the  most  mundane  and  secular,  the 
least  imaginative  and  moving.  And  the  issue  of  them  all 
is  an  extraordinary  affection  for  Walton.  These  great 
Churchmen  seem,  indeed,  in  Wordsworth's  phrase, 

"  Satellites  burning  in  a  lucid  ring 
Around  meek  Walton's  heavenly  memory  "  : 

their  destiny  was  not  only  to  be  great  themselves,  but  to 
reveal  a  true  greatness  of  nature  in  the  "  linendraper  "  who 
wrote  of  them.  For  his  gift  of  appreciation  and  of  rever- 
ence betokens  somewhat  in  him  akin  to  the  virtues  which 
he  hailed  in  them.  It  takes  a  saint,  the  saying  runs,  to 
write  the  lives  of  saints.  These  good  Anglican  divines  are 
not  saints,  but  their  Church  has  produced  few  saintlier  men 
than  some  of  them  :  and  Walton  was  to  the  full  worthy  of 
celebrating  them.     In  his  old-world  simplicity  and  content, 


254  1'<^ST    LIMINIUM 

his  cheerful  piety  and  peace,  Walton  illustrates  the  true 
English  Toryism,  which  is  the  monopoly  of  no  party :  he 
does  so  upon  the  homelier,  humbler  side,  as  Burke  upon 
the  public  and  the  national.  We  all  agree  with  the  comic 
Boswell,  that  he  is  "most  pleasingly  edifying";  with 
Lamb,  that  his  Angler  "  would  sweeten  a  man's  temper 
at  any  time  .  .  .  would  Christianise  every  discordant, 
angry  passion,"  Reverence  and  cheerfulness  are  his  notes ; 
and  he  lived  from  the  last  Tudor  to  the  last  Stuart,  from 
the  Armada  almost  to  the  Revolution !  His  was  not  the 
Olympian  calm  of  Goethe  in  times  of  national  confusion, 
the  scientific  absorption  of  Archimedes  or  of  Hegel,  the 
strangely  marked  aloofness  of  his  contemporary  Herrick ; 
he  simply  went  his  way,  watching  and  praying  for  happier 
times,  yet  thankful  for  the  constant  goodness  of  his  God, 
Who  sends  flowers  and  birds,  with  all  manner  of  delights, 
and  right  proper  days  to  go  a-fishing.  There  are  the  rare 
sermons  of  Dr.  Donne,  that  choice  song  of  worthy  Sir 
Henry  Wotton,  these  divine  strains  of  holy  Mr.  Herbert ; 
there  is  the  society  and  the  wit  of  "  hearty,  cheerful  Mr. 
Cotton " :  there  is  clerical  converse  with  his  kinsfolk  at 
Winchester,  and  excellent  clear  chalk  streams.  And  always 
there  rise  the  memories  of  his  most  esteemed  friends,  whose 
lives  he  can  write,  whose  deaths  he  trusts  to  imitate.  It  is 
Sursum  Corda  with  him,  and  a  perpetual  Te  De^nn ;  and 
his  philosophy  is  in  these  lines  by  the  saintly  Platonist, 
Dr.  Henry  More : 

"  Power,  Wisdome,  Goodnesse,  sure  did  frame 
This  Universe  ;  and  still  guide  the  same : 
But  Thoughts  from  Passion  sprung  deceive 
Vaine  Mortalls  :     Noe  Man  can  contrive 
A  better  Race  than  what's  been  runne 
Since  the  first  Circuit  of  the  Sunne." 

Which  is  true,  though  Voltaire  or  Schopenhauer  rage  never 
so  furiously. 


THE  STRAIN  OF   MYSTICISM    IN    THE   ENGLISH         255 

THE  STRAIN   OF   MYSTICISM    IN   THE 
ENGLISH 

{The  speaker^  Sept.  22,  1894.] 
A  GENERAL  truth  seems  to  be  that  whilst  formal  mysticism 
(the  mysticism  of  Germany  and  Spain)  has  been  uncon- 
genial to  the  English  mind,  yet  that  a  free  mystical  strain 
has  run  through  English  literature.  English  religion,  since 
the  Reformation,  can  boast  of  the  Cambridge  Platonists 
and  of  Leighton  and  Law,  among  the  "  orthodox  "  ;  of  Fox 
and  Bunyan,  Wesley  and  Irving,  among  the  nobler 
"  schismatics " ;  of  countless  queer  and  pathetic  bodies, 
Muggletonians  and  the  like,  such  as  flourish  among  us 
still,  sweUing  the  "  varieties  of  Protestantism."  But  it  is  in 
English  letters,  rather  than  in  English  religion,  that  some- 
thing mystical  has  prevailed ;  something  which  warrants 
M.  Brunetiere  in  saying  that  while  French  literature 
expresses  the  communis  senstis  of  the  world,  English  gives 
voice  to  personal  vagaries,  strange  idiosyncrasies,  individual 
emotions,  the  lyrical  cries  and  private  thoughts  of  isolated 
single  souls.  In  the  last  century,  English  writers  were  for 
establishing  a  check  against  the  spirit  of  lawlessness,  or  of 
each  man's  being  "  a  law  unto  himself"  :  they  did  great 
and  good  things,  but  in  that  they  failed.  To-day,  English 
literature  has  all  the  extravagance  and  individualism  of  the 
Elizabethan.  French  writers  have  no  sense  of  mystery : 
even  the  French  mystics,  a  Francis  of  Sales,  a  Fenelon,  a 
Madame  Guyon,  have  none.  They  are  touching,  and 
melting,  and  moving,  sometimes  majestic  and  superb ;  but 
there  is  no  feeling  of  awe,  no  shudder  and  thrill,  either  of 
agony  or  of  ecstasy,  when  reading  them.  And  the  poets, 
the  orators,  the  historians  and  romance-writers  of  France 
are  in  like  case.  Chateaubriand  and  Michelet,  Hugo  and 
Lacordaire,  Renan  and  Balzac,  Mirabeau  and  Diderot, 
Baudelaire  and  Rousseau, — there  is  not  one  line  in  them 


256  POST   LIMINIUM 

which  gives  us  the  sense  of  an  everlasting  wonder  and  a 
fearful  joy.  But  Langland  is  an  early  chief  of  a  great 
company,  among  whom  are  Wesley  and  Shelley,  Blake  and 
Browning,  Cowper  and  Carlyle,  Coleridge  and  Newman. 
M.  Jusserand  traces  the  strain  of  semi-mystical  emotion, 
common  to  them  all,  to  the  Germanic  element  in  the 
English  race.  But,  thanks  to  the  fusion  of  races,  the 
mingling,  as  Arnold  eloquently  explains,  of  Celt  and 
Teuton  and  Scandinavian,  the  English  race  has  neither  the 
metaphysical  turn  of  the  Germans,  nor  the  idealism  of 
the  Celt  undiluted  and  pure ;  the  two  combine,  and  have 
created  a  literature  of  beautiful  mysticism,  a  literature  full 
of  strangeness  and  propensity,  of  thought  quivering  with 
emotion.  In  Tennyson's  phrase,  our  poets  "  follow  the 
Gleam."  .  .  .  No  passage  of  Hugo's  greatest  verse,  magnifi- 
cent and  resonant,  rings  so  true  and  pierces  so  deep  as  do 
Wordsworth's  "  Tintern  Abbey"  lines,  or  some  of  Shake- 
speare's sonnets.  Take  the  late  Mr.  Pearson's  National 
Life  and  Character :  it  is  lucid,  systematic,  unrhetorical,  a 
book  of  statistics,  of  scientific  induction,  of  historical  com- 
parison ;  yet  what  a  sense  of  the  mystery  of  things,  what  a 
feeling  for  the  strangeness  of  human  fortunes,  the  lots, 
issues,  and  struggles  of  mortality  !  The  English  distaste 
for  logic  springs  from  the  instinctive  conviction  that  logic 
cannot  get  to  the  heart  of  anything :  the  conviction  that 
animated  Burke  in  pleading  for  Ireland,  and  against  the 
French  Revolution.  "  All  shallows  are  clear,"  said  Johnson, 
when  one  praised  the  clearness  of  Hume ;  and  in  the  same 
century  Butler  and  Berkeley  poured  scorn  upon  the  facile 
coffee-house  sceptic  who  never  recognized  the  heights  and 
depths  of  existence. 

"  Thus  God  hath  willed, 

That  man,  when  fully  skilled 
Still  gropes  in  twilight  dim  : 
Encompassed  all  his  hours, 
By  fearfullest  powers 
Inflexible  to  him." 


CANT  257 

It  is  this  recognition  of  a  mystery  in  the  world,  however 
vaguely  and  variably  felt,  which  forbids  one  to  believe  that 
Englishmen  will  ever  accept  purely  *'  scientific  and  secular '' 
principles  of  individual  or  of  social  life.  English  literature 
has  been  wont  to  take  the  side  of  faith  in  unseen  realities. 
Not  all  the  forces  of  material  desire  and  material  comfort, 
of  national  pride  and  social  dissatisfaction,  have  been  able 
to  turn  the  face  of  England  towards  the  way  that  ends  in 
the  anarchy  of  atheism  and  the  atheism  of  anarchy. 


CANT 

[T/te  Anti-Jacobin,  Aug.  22,  189 1.] 
Dr.  Johnson  is  commonly  said  to  have  said  :  "  Clear  your 
mind  of  cant"  Good  advice,  but  not  Dr.  Johnson's. 
He  said,  with  far  deeper  wisdom  :  "  Clear  your  7tiind  of 
cant."  He  saw  no  great  harm  in  foolish  talk,  but  infinite 
harm  in  foolish  thought.  That,  in  other  words,  was  the 
doctrine  of  Plato.  "  The  lie  in  the  soul,"  the  lie  without 
knowledge,  is  disastrous ;  the  conscious  lie,  the  verbal  lie, 
implies  no  fundamental  error  of  mind  or  soul.  So,  again, 
Bacon  laid  down  that  "  it  is  not  the  lie  that  passeth  through 
the  mind,  but  the  lie  that  sinketh  in  and  settleth  in  it,  that 
doth  the  hurt."  In  the  same  way  theologians  hold  that  not 
the  wrong  deed,  but  the  thought  of  the  wrong-doer,  is  the 
heinous  part  of  crime.  And  when  a  man,  thinking  himself 
right,  does  wrong,  that  man  is  dangerous  indeed. 

But  public  opinion  seems  to  be  changing  upon  these 
matters;  and  if  you  say,  think,  or  do  the  most  injurious 
things,  a  plea  of  good  intention,  or  of  ignorance,  or  of 
obedience  to  conscience,  will  avail  you  with  a  multitude  of 
emotional  thinkers.  You  did  what  you  thought  right; 
honestly,  you  knew  no  better.  Your  conscience  had  a  fatal 
twist ;  it  is  not  as  if  you  had  done  deliberate  wrong.  And 
you  will  be  petted  and  protected,  and  wrapped  round  in 


258  POST    LIMINIUM 

your  delusion  ;  your  mind  will  remain  clouded  with  cant. 
In  politics,  in  art,  in  religion,  this  cant  in  the  guise  of  truth 
is  pernicious  beyond  words ;  and  politics,  including  all 
social  matters,  art,  including  all  intellectual  matters, 
religion,  including  all  spiritual  matters,  are  the  three  chief 
concerns  of  man. 

We  all  remember  Mr.  Burchell  in  TAe  Vicar  of  Wake- 
field and  the  immortal  talk  of  the  fashionable  ladies, 
punctuated  by  his  exclamation  of  Fudge  !  Let  us  try  Cant 
instead.  "All  landlords  are  robbers."  Cant!  "All 
Socialists  are  thieves."  Cant !  "  The  Pope  is  a  bloody 
tyrant."  Cant !  "  Protestants  are  atheists  at  heart."  Cant ! 
"French  novelists  are  profligates."  Cant!  "English 
novelists  are  prudes."     Cant ! 

No  doubt  a  man  may  utter  those  sentiments  and  do  no 
great  harm.  Say  to  him  :  "  You  don't  mean  that,"  and  he 
may  reply  :  "  Well,  there  are  exceptions,"  or  "  Of  course  it's 
an  exaggeration."  It  is  a  pity  to  make  sweeping  assertions  of 
the  kind;  but  so  long  as  you  do  not  hold  them  for  first 
principles  and  for  invincible  truths,  you  will  be  harmless 
enough,  because  you  will  not  act  upon  them.  But  if  such 
sentiments  are  the  source  of  your  action,  the  inspiration 
of  your  conduct,  the  watchwords  of  your  life,  you  will  be 
an  incalculable  nuisance.  The  last  century  would  have 
called  you  an  enthusiast ;  the  present  century  ought  to  call 
you  a  fanatic.  The  older  term  is  the  better ;  enthusiasm 
means  nothing  but  inspired  frenzy,  that  is,  a  madness  of 
heart  and  soul,  and  infinitely  strong.  Insanity  may  do  great 
things,  and  be  the  gift  of  the  gods;  but  wise  men  will 
always  prefer  sanity.  When  the  last  century  praised  a  man 
for  high  and  ardent  thoughts  it  called  him  "  generous," 
it  praised  his  "  liberality  "  of  mind  and  his  "  elevation  "  of 
soul.  The  words  mean  all  that  is  refined  and  chivalrous, 
open  and  free,  high  and  aspiring.  "  Enthusiasm  "  implies  a 
bondage  and  a  compulsion.  The  generous  man  is  full  of 
light,  reason,  serenity ;  the  enthusiastic  man,  of  bedazzlement, 


CANT  859 

impulse,  passion.  And  these  are  the  most  honoured  qualities 
in  our  day,  which  loves  noise  and  glare. 

Go  into  Hyde  Park  on  a  Sunday  afternoon ;  hear  the 
enthusiasts  !  Look  at  the  faces  of  the  orators  :  here  is  a 
pale,  thin  face,  glowing  with  conviction ;  there  a  strong, 
square  face,  rugged  with  energy ;  there  a  dull  quiet  face, 
pathetic  in  its  sincerity.  And  the  voices :  one  rancorous 
with  animosity,  one  thrilling  with  passion,  one  struggling 
for  utterance.  The  listener  lounges  past,  amused  by  the 
uneducated  appeals  to  his  reason,  his  conscience,  his 
prejudice,  and  his  purse.  "  Let  them  talk  :  a  safety  valve  !" 
Well,  it  may  be ;  but  I  am  not  altogether  amused  by  these 
denunciations  of  everything  in  heaven  and  earth.  That 
half-shaven  evangelist  believes  with  an  intense  conviction 
than  I  am  an  idolater,  that  my  religion  is  a  curse  and  a 
pestilence ;  yet  he  could  not  correctly  state  one  doctrine  that 
I  hold.  Or  that  sarcastic  gentleman  in  his  shirt-sleeves, 
roaring  like  a  bull,  he  calls  me  a  grinder  of  the  faces  of  the 
poor,  a  devourer  of  other  men's  bread,  a  pampered  idler. 
Or  that  ecstatic  person,  who  will  have  it  that  each  glass  I 
drink  helps  forward  the  ruin  of  my  country  and  of  my 
soul.  This  is  very  terrible  :  those  things  were  not  said  at 
Cana  in  Galilee.  And  here  is  a  persuasive  Pharisee,  who 
says  that  if  I  read  a  French  novel,  or  look  at  a  picture  from 
the  nude,  my  mind  becomes  poisoned  and  corrupt.  Dear 
sir,  if  you  are  logical,  you  will  blind  and  deafen  me  for  my 
salvation. 

"  Let  'em  talk."  Certainly ;  but  is  it  no  more  than  talk? 
I  know  it  is  neither  reason  nor  sense ;  but  I  am  afraid  it 
is  sincere  thought  of  a  kind.  Those  good  people  would, 
many  of  them,  die  for  their  doctrines ;  they  are  not  all 
impostors,  agitators,  screaming  themselves  into  notice. 
"  Clear  your  mind  of  cant."  The  misfortune  is  that  these 
fanatics  are  thorough-going  believers  in  their  own  inspiration. 
Go  up  to  the  preacher  of  total  abstinence  ;  ask  him  to  be 
less  vehement  and  sweeping.     He  will  refuse  to  abandon 


26o  POST   LIMINIUM 

"  one  inch  of  his  ground,  one  fraction  of  his  principles." 
Speak  courteously  to  that  scourge  of  Papists.  Say  something 
about  charity,  and  throw  in  a  word  or  two  about  mis-state- 
ments :  in  vain.  "  What  the  Lord  hath  put  into  his  mouth, 
that  only  can  he  speak."  As  he  answers  you,  you  see  the 
fierce  determination  of  the  man;  and  his  little  band  of 
followers  nod  at  each  other.  Away  they  go,  banners  flying, 
trumpets  braying,  and  people  say  :  "  Beautiful !  in  this  cynical 
age  to  see  men  capable  of  fervour  and  conviction."  And  if 
any  one  ventures  a  word  of  criticism  he  is  shrieked  against  for 
a  superior  and  selfish  cynic.  "  Let's  cry  all  together  in  the 
streets,  and  we're  safe  to  get  the  moon,"  says  General  Booth. 
"  I  fear  not,"  says  Mr.  Huxley ;  "  you  had  best  stop  that 
unseemly  noise."  And  the  chorus  goes  up  :  "  Scientific, 
selfish,  cold-blooded,  calculating  cynic  ! "  Well,  if  noise  be 
a  common  necessary  of  modern  life,  let  all  who  are  trying  to 
save  their  souls  without  losing  their  heads  answer  the  shriek- 
ing crew;:  "  Clear  your  mind  of  cant." 


BURKE 

[The  Academy,  July  i6,  1898.] 

This  year  is  Burke's  centenary;  and  never  had  English 
men  of  letters  so  literary  a  statesman  to  honour.  We 
think  of  him  as  the  champion  of  justice  to  Ireland,  India, 
and  America ;  as  the  reformer  of  wrongs  and  abuses  at 
home ;  as  the  prophet  of  wrath  and  woe  to  revolutionary 
France;  but  we  think  of  him,  at  least  not  less  often,  as 
the  friend  of  Johnson  and  Goldsmith,  of  Reynolds  and 
Garrick ;  as  the  patron  of  Barry  and  Crabbe ;  as  a  member 
of  The  Club,  as  one  of  the  most  living  and  immortal 
figures  in  Boswell.  Burke,  thundering  in  Westminster  Hall 
against  Warren  Hastings,  is  not  more  notable  to  us  than 
Burke  among  his  friends,  "  winding  into  his  subject,"  as 
Goldsmith  puts  it,  "like  a  serpent,"  and  proving  himselt 


BURKE  261 

Johnson's  only  rival  in  flow  of  argument  and  illustration. 
He  was  no  Pitt,  destined  to   the  premiership  from  his 
cradle,  and   lisping  politics   in   childhood;  Burke  "com- 
menced author,"  and  turned  politician,  with  a  mind  richly 
cultured  by  the   humanities  and  by  observation  of  men. 
As   Arnold  says  of  him,   he  was   "  almost   alone   among 
Englishmen  in  bringing  thought  to  bear  upon  politics  and 
in  saturating  politics  with  thought."     For  that  very  reason, 
he  is  a  permanent  force  in  the  world  of  political  thought, 
while  his  own  age  found  him  puzzling,  inconsistent,  prickly 
to  handle.     His  political  contemporaries  busied  themselves 
with  the  most  immediate  details  of  the  political  moment. 
Burke  could  not  treat  of  the  simplest  question  unless  sub 
specie  ceierfiitatis  and  in  the  light  of  high  ideas,  with  a  mind 
full  of  the  past   and   foreseeing   the   future.      Never   did 
statesman  bring  to  a  practical  mastery  of  facts  so  vast  a 
power  of  poetic  and  philosophical  imagination,  so  great  a 
command  of   moral  vision.      It  was  his  weakness  as  an 
orator  :   harsh  of  voice,   ungainly  of   gesture,  he   poured 
forth  profundities  of  high  wisdom  in  a  profusion  of  over- 
rushing  eloquence,  until  he  wearied  the  intellectual  few  and 
confounded   the   unintellectual  j^many.      His   writings   are 
greater  than  his  speeches,  great  as  those  are ;  and  we  may 
feel  very  confident  that  we,  who  read  his  speeches,  admire 
them  more  passionately  than  did  our  ancestors,  who  heard 
them.    We  can  follow  at  our  lonely  leisure  the  miracle  of 
cunning   logic   that  runs   through   that    other  miracle   of 
golden  eloquence ;  we  can  discern  the  stately  structure,  the 
high-wrought  design,  the  imperial  composition,  better  than 
even  the  most  illustrious  of  those  who  watched  that  tall, 
gaunt   figure  with  its  whirling  arms,  and  listened  to  the 
Niagara  of  words  bursting  and  shrieking  from  those  im- 
petuous  lips.     The   impassioned   Irishman  who  took  all 
human  nature,  all  human  history,  for  his  province,  was  not 
the  most  appropriate  orator  for  an  audience  of  Georgian 
squires  and  placemen ;  they  may  not  have  appreciated  Fox 


262  POST   LIMINIUM 

and  Sheridan  and  Pitt,  but  at  the  least  they  must  have 
found  them  more  intelUgible,  more  comfortable  speakers. 
For  Burke's  oratory,  rapid  and  fervent  as  it  was,  and 
infinitely  emotional,  was  yet  literature ;  it  has  no  sonorous 
commonplace,  no  re-iteration  of  one  argument  in  a  thou- 
sand forms,  none  of  the  devices  so  necessary  for  attracting 
and  then  holding  the  attention,  for  awakening  and  then 
keeping  the  intelligence,  of  an  audience.  On  the  contrary, 
it  is  compact  of  continuous  and  progressive  reasoning  ;  its 
copiousness  of  illustration,  its  wealth  of  imaginative 
phrasing,  are  not  rhetorical  embellishments  to  delight  the 
hearers,  but  the  inevitable  luxuriance  of  a  full  and  fertile 
mind,  from  which  nihil  hunani  alienum^  which  caught  inspi- 
ration from  all  regions  of  its  knowledge  and  experience. 
Said  Johnson,  in  ill-health  :  "  That  fellow  calls  forth  all  my 
powers ;  were  I  to  see  Burke  now,  it  would  kill  me."  If 
the  prince  of  talkers  felt  that,  it  seems  probable  that  the 
House  of  Commons  felt  somewhat  stunned  and  over- 
whelmed by  the  serried  array  of  Burke's  thoughts  and 
words,  so  numerous,  yet  all  so  necessary.  For — think  of 
it ! — to  Irish  eloquence  and  imagination  he  added  English 
common-sense,  and  enriched  both  with  wide  scholarship, 
with  various  learning,  with  liberal  culture.  We  have  the 
result  of  it  in  a  series  of  orations  which  are  among  the 
choicest  glories  of  literature.  Whether  as  orator  or  as 
writer,  Burke  stands  in  the  great  succession  :  he  was  almost 
the  last  legitimate  descendant  of  Hooker,  Bacon,  Milton, 
Taylor,  Browne,  of  the  men  who  used  the  English  tongue 
with  fearless  magnificence,  with  *'  pomp  and  prodigality," 
glorying  to  reveal  its  richness  of  majestic  music.  His 
most  eminent  contemporaries,  Hume  and  Gibbon,  and 
even  Johnson,  seem  absolutely  of  our  day  beside  him  :  to 
find  his  like,  we  must  look  on  to  De  Quincey,  Coleridge, 
Hazlitt,  Lamb.  But  they  were,  more  or  less,  deliberate 
imitators  of  the  English  ancients :  Burke's  royal  utterance 
was  native  to  his  tongue.    Like  Hooker,  he  revered  and 


BURKE  263 

extolled  the  sanctity  of  Law ;  and  can  we  not  easily 
imagine  Burke,  not  Hooker,  author  of  the  most  famous 
praise  of  Law  ? 

"  Of  Law  there  can  be  no  less  acknowledged  than  that  her  seat  is 
the  bosom  of  God,  her  voice  the  harmony  of  the  world  :  all  things  in 
heaven  and  earth  do  her  homage,  the  very  least  as  feeling  her  care, 
and  the  greatest  as  not  exempt  from  her  power ;  both  angels  and  men, 
and  all  creatures  of  what  condition  soever,  though  each  in  different  sort 
and  manner,  yet  all  with  uniform  consent,  admiring  her  as  the  mother 
of  their  peace  and  joy." 

This  is  not  only  the  doctrine  of  Burke,  but  it  is  the  style 
in  which,  at  his  noblest  moments,  he  loved  to  write.  The 
Commonwealth,  he  writes,  is  consecrated  : 

*'  This  consecration  is  made,  that  all  who  administer  in  the  govern- 
ment of  men,  in  which  they  stand  in  the  person  of  God  Himself, 
should  have  high  and  worthy  notions  of  their  function  and  destination  ; 
that  their  hope  should  be  full  of  immortality  ;  that  they  should  not 
look  to  the  paltry  pelf  of  the  moment,  nor  to  the  temporary  and 
transient  praise  of  the  vulgar,  but  to  a  solid  permanent  existence  in 
the  permanent  part  of  their  nature,  and  to  a  permanent  fame  and 
glory  in  the  example  they  leave  as  a  rich  inheritance  to  the  world." 

Burke  denounces  a  "  regicide  peace "  with  the  stately 
vehemence  of  Milton  defending  an  earlier  regicide :  he 
habitually  thought  in  "  that  large  utterance  of  the  early 
gods,"  but  with  less  of  extravagance,  more  of  judgment. 
There  is  no  English  which  carries  the  reader  more  irre- 
sistibly forward  than  the  spacious  and  goodly  English  of 
Burke,  as  it  sweeps  and  surges  on  its  imperious  way. 

When  Mr.  Aubrey  de  Vere  asked  Tennyson  whether  he 
were  a  Conservative,  the  poet  answered :  "  I  am  for  pro- 
gress, and  would  conserve  the  hopes  of  men."  A  splendid 
confession  of  faith,  and  very  Burke.  He  had  an  intense 
feeling  for  the  betterment  of  mankind,  but  upon  the  antiques 
vice:  he  loved  reformation,  hated  innovation.  To  him 
there  was  a  mysterious  divinity  hedging  the  very  existence 
of  civilised  societies :  behind  legal  enactment,  and  social 


264  POST   LIMINIUM 

usage,  and  public  order^  lay  no  purely  natural  origin  or 
principle  of  growth  and  life,  but  "  something  far  more 
deeply  interfused  "  :  Odov  tI.  He  speaks  of  the  State,  the 
Commonwealth,  in  terms  of  reverent  awe  commonly  re- 
served for  the  Church :  be  the  inherited  form  of  govern- 
ment what  it  may,  it  is  to  him  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant. 
That  "  metaphysical,"  or  "  mechanical,"  or  "  mathematical  " 
systems  and  theories  should  usurp  the  august  place  of  long- 
descended  wisdom,  realised  and  energising  through  a 
thousand  channels,  was  a  nightmare  in  his  eyes.  He  was 
a  devotee  of  facts,  patent  and  established ;  he  appealed  to 
no  ideals  of  Cloud-Cuckoo-Town,  but  to  the  circumstances 
and  conditions  that  he  found  about  him.  In  a  fine  sense, 
he  was  the  prophet  of  expediency.  If  certain  treatment 
of  the  American  Colonies,  of  the  Irish  Catholics,  was 
visibly  ruinous  and  morally  wrong,  he  cared  nothing  for 
demonstrations  that  it  was  legally,  technically  justified ; 
he  was  always  for  considering  the  "  nature  and  necessities  " 
of  the  case.  Viewing  the  world  with  eyes  trained  to  see 
it  "  steadily  and  whole,"  he  had  no  patience  with  extremes  ; 
"  the  rights  of  man  lie  in  a  middle."  We  must  give  and 
take.  The  one  thing  fatal  is  to  insist  upon  rigid  adherence 
to  any  abstract  principle,  axiom,  proposition,  up  in  the  air, 
rather  than  to  the  visible  and  tangible  facts,  clothed  with 
flesh  and  blood,  among  which  we  live.  To  reject  the  past, 
to  become  a  voluntary  parvemi  and  orphan,  to  long  for  a 
vulgar  nouvelle  7-ichesse  in  principles  and  institutions,  is  to 
make  yourself  a  sorry  and  shivering  spectacle  before  the 
angels.  Burke  was  both  reformer  and  reactionary,  but 
always  consistent;  from  first  to  last  he  fought  for  the 
reform  or  the  improvement  of  society ;  but  let  it  go  un- 
reformed  and  unimproved,  if  reform  and  improvement 
meant  radical  innovation.  His  temper, was  much  that  of 
Erasmus  and  More  in  the  sixteenth  century.  Reform  the 
Church  !  Yes,  with  all  our  hearts  !  but  if  reformation  mean 
deformation,  and  to  purify  the  Church  be  to  unchurch  it, 


BURKE  265 

no !  To  Burke  the  horror  of  the  French  Revolution  lay 
in  its  wanton  destruction  of  ancient  ties  with  the  national 
past,  its  ruthless  waste  of  venerable  institutions.  He  was 
no  sentimentalist  aghast  at  bloodshed  and  spoliation,  deeply 
as  they  moved  him.  With  his  friend  Goldsmith  he  would 
not  be  content  to  mourn  over  the  picturesque  desolation  of 
"  Sweet  Auburn,"  its  ruined  gardens  and  crumbling  cottages  ; 
he,  too,  would  find  the  real  sorrow  in  the  fact  that 

"  — a  bold  peasantry,  their  country's  pride, 
When  once  destroyed,  can  never  be  supplied." 

When  Jacobins  rapturously  destroyed  what  no  power  could 
supply, — a  truth  acknowledged  by  Carlyle — Burke  mourned 
with  a  more  than  Jacobinical  intensity.  But  he  brought 
the  same  intensity  of  protest  against  the  mad  Toryism 
which,  relying  upon  prescriptive  right,  insisted  upon  wrong- 
ing British  America  :  in  each  case  he  saw  things  as  they  in 
truth  were,  not  with  distorted  vision.  It  was  clearness  of 
vision  to  discern  what  was,  which  gave  him  "  something 
like  prophetic  strain " ;  half  his  passion  proceeded  from  a 
sense  of  foreseeing  so  clearly  from  to-day's  facts,  what 
must  be  to-morrow's,  while  others  were  in  judicial  blind- 
ness. It  is  terrible  to  be  Cassandra :  and  that  was  often 
Burke's  exasperating  lot. 

But  his  wisdom  is  for  all  time,  not  for  the  last  century. 
When  we  wish  to  study  principles  of  government,  of  state- 
craft, of  political  philosophy,  which  breathe  the  very 
reality  of  humanity,  yet  are  filled  with  a  sacred  spirit  from 
"  an  ampler  ether,  a  diviner  air "  than  ours,  we  can  turn 
with  security  to  our  Chrysostom  of  statesmen.  Turgenev 
calls  one  of  his  creatures  *'  the  idealist  of  realism."  With 
a  loftier  signification  it  is  true  of  Burke. 


266  POST   LIMINIUM 


AN    OLD   DEBATE 

[The  Anti-Jacobin^  July  i8,  1891.] 
Some  twenty-five  miles  from  Bordeaux,  in  the  hot  vine-land 
of  Gascony,  stands  the  chateau  of  the  Seigneurs  de  Mon- 
tesquieu :  a  moat  encircles  it,  inhabited  by  huge  and  greedy 
carp.  Over  the  gateway  runs,  in  letters  obscured  by  lichen, 
the  Horatian  legend :  "  O  rtis,  qtmndo  ego  te  aspiciam  I " 
There  the  great  President  wrote  his  L Esprit  des  Lois : 
there,  in  an  upper  chamber,  is  still  preserved  his  manuscript. 
An  eminent  and  worthy  philosopher  and  noble ;  whose  work 
was  the  labour  of  twenty  years,  and  whose  style,  so  Gray 
wrote,  has  "  the  gravity  of  Tacitus  tempered  with  the  gaiety 
and  fire  of  a  Frenchman."  But  why  runs  that  classic  legend 
over  the  gates  of  a  country  chateau,  and  not  over  the  gates 
of  a  Parisian  hotel  ?  Shall  we  try  to  answer  that  question  ? 
It  is  an  old  debate  :  Town  or  Country  !  Let  us  take  it 
away  from  sunny  Gascony  to  England  :  for  Town,  read 
London.  Poet,  moralist,  novelist,  satirist,  they  have  all 
recorded  their  thoughts  upon  the  matter.  Here  is  Gray  : 
"  I  have  been  at  London  this  month ;  that  tiresome,  dull 
place  !  where  all  people  under  thirty  find  so  much  amuse- 
ment." Well,  till  our  thirtieth  year  we  have  Gray's  leave 
to  enjoy  London.  And  Walpole  comes  to  our  aid :  "  Dull 
as  London  is  in  summer,  there  is  always  more  company  in 
it  than  in  any  one  place  in  the  country."  Johnson,  too, 
"  habituated  himself  to  consider  living  in  the  country  as  a 
kind  of  mental  imprisonment."  The  phrase  reminds  one  of 
that  phrase  just  now  frequent  upon  men's  lips  in  London  : 
"  When  shall  you  get  away  ?  "  as  though  London  were  some 
hated  dungeon  out  of  which  to  break.  We  turn  to  Lamb  : 
"  Enchanting  London  ! "  he  cries  :  "  Oh,  her  lamps  of  a 
night!"  A  splendid  enthusiasm  is  there  in  that  brief 
sentence.  "  All  the  streets  and  pavements  are  pure  gold, 
I  warrant  you.     As  least  I  know  an  alchemy  that  turns  her 


AN   OLD   DEBATE  267 

mud  into  that  metal,  a  mind  that  loves  to  be  at  home  in 
crowds."  And  he  writes  to  Wordsworth,  who  never  learned 
the  lesson :  "  The  wonder  of  these  sights  impels  me  into  night 
walks  about  her  crowded  streets,  and  I  often  shed  tears  in 
the  motley  Strand  from  fulness  of  joy  at  so  much  life." 
Wordsworth  was  afraid  and  disquieted  in  London.  "  Thou 
endless  stream  of  men  and  moving  things ! "  he  cried  to 
London,  in  his  youth,  struck  with  a  sense  of  helplessness. 
And  when  he  would  show  the  greatest  beauty  of  London, 
and  of  all  the  earth,  he  chose  the  still  morning,  when  that 
"  endless  stream  "  is  at  rest : 

•'  Dear  God  !  the  very  houses  seem  asleep  ; 
And  all  that  mighty  heart  is  lying  still." 

Sooner  than  live  in  a  great  city,  he  would  have  echoed  the 
aspiration  of  a  lady  in  Dickens,  to  "retreat  to  a  Swiss 
farm,  and  live  entirely  surrounded  by  cows  and  china." 
Hawthorne,  of  all  shy  and  lonely  recluses,  could  write  : 
"Whatever  has  been  my  taste  for  solitude  and  natural 
scenery,  yet  the  thick,  foggy,  stifled  element  of  cities,  the 
entangled  life  of  many  men  together,  sordid  as  it  was,  and 
empty  of  the  beautiful,  took  quite  as  strenuous  a  hold  upon 
my  mind.  I  felt  as  if  there  could  never  be  enough  of  it." 
But  quotation  is  endless  work,  or  rather,  infinite  pleasure. 
Now  to  sage  reflection. 

After,  let  us  say,  Oxford,  take  London :  after  the 
beautiful  gray  city,  a  wilderness  of  sordid  houses ;  after 
the  little  country  town,  a  swarming  capital.  Yet  without 
shame  or  hesitation  we  prefer  London  :  prefer  it  for  the 
sake  of  those  very  instincts  of  literature  and  learning  which 
Oxford  fosters.  The  enormous  energies  of  London  call  up 
answering  emotions  in  the  hearts  of  spectators  :  it  is  the 
summons  to  a  fuller  life,  the  inspiration  of  a  fuller  under- 
standing. Certainly,  there  are  great  trials  of  mind  and  soul 
for  a  spectator  of  London  :  the  difficulty  of  mastering  it,  of 
seeing  it  "  steadily  and  whole."     For  the  immense  activity 


2  68  POST   LIMINIUM 

of  London  the  mind  has  no  equal  energy  and  force : 
it  takes  the  impression  of  vast  things  without  realising 
them.  And  so,  at  first,  we  are  troubled  by  a  senti- 
ment of  our  insufficiency  :  we  seem  to  live  at  random, 
at  the  mercy  of  multitudes,  in  a  labyrinth  of  ways.  And 
the  country  fields,  the  little  country  towns,  look  so  peaceful 
at  their  distance !  But  all  that  is  a  false  dream,  natural 
enough  to  inexperienced  wonder.  Gradually,  imperceptibly, 
London  grows  homely  and  familiar ;  we  discover  ourselves 
again  among  manageable  circumstances,  in  pleasant  lights. 
Lamb  said  true  :  the  chief  part  of  the  discovery  is  the 
growth  in  us  of  a  love  for  crowds,  for  stirring  life.  Pascal 
could  not  comprehend  those  who  call  the  pleasure  of 
solitude  incomprehensible  :  but  that  was  the  austere  and 
ascetic  Pascal,  not  the  Pascal  of  Parisian  society.  In  truth, 
loneliness'is  the  most  terrible  of  calamities  ;  the  loneliness 
which  implies,  not  love  of  meditation,  but  absence  of 
sympathy.  And  in  London,  the  man  of  letters  whose 
business  lies  in  the  expression  of  life,  real  or  touched  with 
imagination,  is  quickened  to  action  by  the  presence  of  great 
crowds.  He  assents  to  Suckling,  most  human  of  singers, 
when  he  sings  : 

"  Blackfriars  to  me,  and  old  Whitehall, 
Is  even  as  much  as  is  the  fall 
Of  fountains  on  a  pathless  grove, 
And  nourishes  as  much  by  love." 

To  the  lover  of  London,  the  noisy  flaring  streets  are  a 
hunting-ground  of  emotions,  a  garden  of  ideas.  Going  out 
into  the  crowded  day  or  the  tumultuous  night,  fresh  from 
Apuleius  or  from  Lucian,  he  will  find  all  that  ancient  wit 
and  beauty  informed  with  new  life.  He  wonders  how 
Smollett  would  have  hit  off  these  motley  humours,  or  how 
Goldsmith  would  have  given  to  them  a  graceful  sentiment, 
or  Addison  invested  them  with  a  delicate,  happy  charm. 
The  more  abundant  and  varied  life  be,  the  better  for  the 
man  of  letters  ;  it  educates  him,     It  was  an  excellent  thing 


AN   OLD   DEBATE  269 

for  Coleridge  to  have  been  a  dragoon ;  for  Gibbon  to  have 
joined  the  militia  ;  for  Dante  and  for  Hugo  to  have  known 
exile,  ^schylus  learned  much  from  Marathon :  Goethe 
from  the  Court  of  Weimar.  It  is  a  pleasant  wholesome 
thing  to  walk  along  the  streets,  letting  no  sight  or  word 
escape  us,  coarse  or  trivial  :  to  leave  at  home  our  proper 
thoughts,  and  to  join  the  throng.  After  all,  other  people  are 
very  companionable.  Csesar  held  in  mistrust  the  lean,  who 
think  too  much ;  others  have  misliked  the  haters  of  children, 
of  music,  and  of  bread  :  for  ourselves,  we  will  be  friends  with 
no  man  who  goes  down  the  Strand  with  an  Odi  profajitim  on 
his  lips.  Where  are  your  mighty  orators,  your  biting  satirists, 
your  kindly  humorists,  without  the  "  miscellany  rabble  "  ? 
Cicero  has  a  terrible  expression,  speaking  of  depopulated 
Italy :  the  solitudo  Italia:.  An  intolerable  sadness  rings 
through  the  phrase  :  as  though  he  would  express  not  the 
mere  absence  of  men,  but  the  personal  presence  of  desola- 
tion also ;  as  though  Italy  felt  her  loneliness.  That  is  a 
feeling  common  to  many  places,  to  any  place  of  which  we 
can  say,  vasta  silentia/  This  it  is  which  turns  strong, 
cordial  men  into  an  Amiel  or  an  Obermann.  Nature  can 
be  made  so  austere,  and  in  her  very  sympathy  so  cold :  but 
a  crowded  city  !  there  is  a  treasure  of  rich  emotion.  Moving 
among  crowds  with  keen  eyes  and  open  minds,  we  reach  the 
feeling  of  a  creator  :  we  read  secrets,  we  surprise  confidences, 
and  it  is  a  shallow  reproach  which  thinks  evil  of  the 
discoveries  of  misery  and  wrong.  Be  our  delight  in  cities 
and  in  crowds  a  delight  in  their  tragedy  or  in  their  joy, 
it  is  equally  an  honest  and  a  true  delight. 

Why  runs  that  legend  over  the  gates  of  the  Gascon 
castle  ?  Did  its  lord  love  so  greatly  the  vine-lands  and  the 
orchards  of  the  country  ?  Was  he  sick  and  jaded  with  the 
hollow,  courtly  world,  all  noise  and  glare  ?  If  so,  a  pleasant 
picture  :  like  that  of  Pliny  in  his  two  dear  retreats.  But 
that  was  not  so.  Rather  that  old  French  Seigneur  did  but 
follow  his  age,  and  affect  a  love  for  country  life.     And,  lest 


syo  POST  LIMINIUM 

he  should  forget  it,  he  sends  for  the  carver  and  bids  him 
inscribe  over  the  gateways  that  famous  Hne  of  the  famous 
Horace.  A  classic  artifice  !  Not  now  *'  in  reach  of  sheep- 
bells  is  our  home ;  "  but  what  then  ?  Each  goes  his  way. 
Life  is  a  grave  and  pleasant  thing, 

•'  Alike  in  some  still,  rural  scene, 
Or  Regent  Street  and  Bethnal  Green." 

Many  a  time  more  we  hope  to  go  along  that  desolate 
coast  at  Morwenstow;  to  pass  over  those  wild  moors  of 
Merioneth.  But  from  our  London  windows  we  shall  hear, 
and  shall  love  too,  the  murmur  and  the  roar  of  London. 
Will  anything  come  of  it  ?  At  least,  there  will  come  a  con- 
tinual delight  in  life,  while  memory  last,  and  eyesight  stay, 
and  the  hearing  of  the  ears  takes  in  the  sound  of  a  vast  and 
busy  world. 

HENRY  VAUGHAN,   SILURIST 

[The  Daily  Chronicle,  Dec.,  1896.] 
Here  is  an  edition  of  Vaughan  *  which  should  serve  to  win 
new  readers  for  that  poet  of  a  magnificent  imagination,  often 
of  a  magnificent  expression,  who  has  met  with  such  love 
from  a  few,  with  such  neglect  from  the  many.  Mr. 
Chambers  and  Mr.  Beeching  are  literary  scholars,  whose 
work  is  always  good :  Mr.  Chambers  by  his  thorough 
knowledge  and  indefatigable  pains,  Mr.  Beeching  by  his 
poet's  felicity  in  criticism,  have  between  them  done  all  that 
is  required  to  produce  Vaughan  to  all  advantage.  But  it 
is  the  I  poetry  far  more  than  the  poet,  that  they  have 
illuminated :  much  as  they  have  laboured  upon  the  life, 
genealogy,  records  of  Vaughan,  he  remains  obscure,  in  an 
appropriate  retirement  from  the  public  view,  cloistered  and 

*  The  Poems  of  Henry  Vaughan,  Silurist.  Edited  by  E.  K. 
Chambers,  With  an  introduction  by  H.  C.  Beeching.  London  : 
Lawrence  and  Bullen,  1896. 


HENRY    VAUGHAN,   SILURIST  27 1 

withdrawn  within  his  green  retreats.  He  died  close  upon 
the  alien  eighteenth  century,  in  1695,  ^t  the  age  of  seventy- 
five  ;  and  he  passed  the  greater  part  of  this  long  life  as  a 
contemplative  physician  in  his  own  "Silurist"  region  of 
Wales.  Oxford  and  London  he  had  known,  joining  in  the 
lettered  society  of  the  time.  It  seems  probable  that  he 
took  up  arms  for  the  "White  King,"  whose  cause  he 
idealised  and  loved.  But  that  prolonged  Welsh  solitude 
and  eremitical  estate  is  the  chief  feature  of  his  fortunes, 
and  the  chief  prompter  of  his  poetry.  He  was  Words- 
worthian,  and  even  less  worldly  than  Wordsworth,  who 
owes  him  much.  "  One  of  the  best  men  and  sweetest 
minds  of  the  seventeenth  century,"  he  is  called  by  Miss 
Guiney,  the  American  poetess,  who  has  honoured  well  his 
memory ;  and,  indeed,  through  his  poetry,  this  "  umbratile  " 
poet  becomes  a  familiar  and  dear  friend  to  those  who  live 
with  it. 

Vaughan's  work  recalls  Spenser's  careful  and  authorita- 
tive definition  of  poetry :  it  is  "  a  divine  gift  and  heavenly 
instinct  not  to  be  gotten  by  labour  and  learning,  but 
adorned  with  both,  and  poured  into  the  witte  by  a  certaine 
enthusiasmos  and  celestiall  inspiration."  When  those  partly 
fail  Vaughan,  as  fail  him  they  often  do,  he  is  attractive, 
enjoyable,  interesting,  but  not  astonishing  and  ravishing : 
when  "  the  good  spirit,"  as  Herrick  has  it,  is  upon  him  in 
plenary  power,  he 

"  — to  what  height 
Towers,  in  his  new  ascension  of  delight ! " 

Imagine  Wordsworth  retaining  his  impassioned  Platonism 
of  contemplative  thought,  but  enriching  it  with  something 
of  Crashaw's,  or  of  Miss  Rossetti's,  refulgent  religious 
raptures.  Vaughan,  at  his  noblest,  is  something  like  that ; 
for  amid  all  his  ardours  of  devotion  there  is  a  steady  strain 
of  philosophical  conceptions,  his  Christian  Platonism, 
theological  mysticism  :  he  has  never  the  feverish  fire  which 


272  POST  LIMINIUM 

can  go  nigh  to  making  Crashaw  hysterical  when  he  would 
be  ecstatic.  Vaughan's  is  the  opposite  danger :  he  comes 
close  upon  being  flat  and  dull,  when  his  aim  is  the  lofty 
and  the  calm;  the  lines  do  not  quiver  and  kindle  and 
break  into  a  sudden  glory,  but  pursue  an  even  course  01 
conceits  and  fancies.  He  was  not  a  Herbert,  able  to 
compose  devout  poems  with  little  let  or  hindrance  every 
day,  "  following  the  Church's  year "  with  a  kind  of 
professional  aptitude,  and  seldom  falling  greatly  beneath 
his  best  elevations.  Five  or  six  of  Herbert's  greater  pieces 
are  very  wonderful,  yet  it  would  have  been  no  huge 
miracle  had  he  produced  a  whole  volume  of  like  excellence ; 
but  a  whole  volume  upon  the  celestial  level  of  Vaughan's 
masterpieces  would  have  been  a  very  marvel  of  miracles, 
and  set  him  among  the  most  Uranian  of  poets. 

"I  saw  Eternity  the  other  night, 
Like  a  great  ring  of  pure  and  endless  light, 

All  calm,  as  it  was  bright ; 
And  round  beneath  it,  Time  in  hours,  days,  and  years, 

Driven  by  the  spheres, 
Like  a  vast  shadow  moved  ;  in  which  the  world 

And  all  her  train  were  hurled." 

Had  Vaughan  constantly  written  with  an  imagination  so 
august,  high  indeed  had  been  his  throne  in  the  Heliconian 
hierarchy. 

The  haunting  preoccupation  of  his  mind  is  the  divine 
ministry  of  the  world,  the  divinity  interpenetrating  the 
universe,  and  ever  ready,  as  it  were,  to  break  through  the 
veil  and  flash  in  visible  form  upon  those  who  have  eyes  to 
see,  who  possess  the  faculty  of  vision.  To  Vaughan,  as  to 
Newman  in  his  sermon  upon  the  powers  of  nature,  the 
operations  of  the  world  are  angelical :  the  "  laws  of  nature  " 
are  the  orderly  and  obedient  workings  of  God's  spirits,  the 
business  of  the  heavenly  host.  Linked  with  that  is  a 
longing  for  the  ancient  days,  when  "the  youthful  world's 
grey  fathers,"  the  "  white  "  patriarchs  and  prophets,  walked 


HENRY    VAUGHAN,    SILURIST  273 

and  held  converse  with  angels ;  yes,  and  with  very  God : 
days  of  the  earth's  innocence,  when  the  dew  of  Eden  was 
yet  fresh.  Then  comes  the  thought  of  his  own  "white 
childhood,"  when  he  "  shined  in  his  angel-infancy " :  and 
all  these  thoughts  are  steeped  in  a  mystical  light  caught 
from  Plato,  the  "Attic  Moses," who  preached  the  "doctrine 
of  ideas,"  which  are  almost  spiritual  persons,  by  whom  and 
in  whom  are  all  things.  He  will,  with  Blake,  Wordsworth, 
Shelley,  gaze  upon  streams  and  flowers,  clouds  and  stars, 
until  there  break  forth  from  them  the  creating  indwelling 
spirit:  for  him,  as  for  Berkeley,  nature  is  "the  visual 
language  of  God."  He  would  have  understood  well  the 
"SiriS"  of  Berkeley,  that  great  philosophic  and  theosophic 
treatise  which  "begins  with  tar- water  and  ends  with  the 
Trinity."  But  many  poets  of  his  time  had  much  of  his 
spirit,  and  realised  with  him  a  transcendental  beauty  or 
power  in  the  visible :  yet  More  of  Cambridge,  Norris  of 
Bemerton,  were  not  great  poets.  Wherein  lies  the  great- 
ness of  Vaughan  ? 

In  his  inspired  ability  to  communicate  high  thoughts  of 
philosophic  value  in  terms  of  the  imagination,  in  artistic 
phrase  and  form,  his  eyes  are  not  "  blinded  with  excess  of 
light,"  but  piercing  keen  and  full  upon  the  natural  world. 
Nature  to  him  is  consecrate ;  he  will  not,  because  natural 
things  are  symbols,  ignore  them  for  love  of  what  they 
symbolise.  He  shows  us  nature,  as  it  indeed  appears,  with 
all  the  grandeur  or  the  delicacy  of  its  phenomenal  life ; 
but,  without  obscuring  that  phenomenal  beauty,  he  can 
show  it  "  apparelled  in  celestial  light."  His  poetry  glitters 
and  glistens  with  a  radiant  purity  and  "  candour  "  : 

"  The  green  wood  glittered  with  the  golden  sun, 
And  all  the  west  like  silver  shined," 

he  says  in  his  "  Daphius  " ;  and  his  own  work  is  like  that, 
magically  lit.  As  has  often  been  pointed  out,  his  favourite 
word  is  "  white."     Now  he  seems  to  have  known  Welsh ; 

T 


274  POST   LIMINIUM 

and  Professor  Rhys  tells  us  that  gwyn,  the  Welsh  word  for 
"white,"  means  also  holy,  happy,  felicitous,  reverend; 
"white  mother"  is  a  Welsh  phrase,  implying  at  once 
reverence  and  endearment  and  joy  upon  the  child's  part. 
So  with  Vaughan,  "  white "  is  a  word  of  infinite  felicity. 
His  choicer  books  are  "  kind  Heaven's  white  decoys";  he 
sings  of "  the  old  white  prophets " ;  the  saints  long  dead 
are  "  those  first  white  pilgrims  " ;  in  childhood  he  knew  no 
evil,  only  "  a  white  celestial  thought " ;  he  regrets  to  have 
no  longer  "those  white  designs  which  children  drive"; 
Jacob's  pastoral  sons  spent  "calm  golden  evenings"  and 
"white  days";  he  must  live  a  pure  life,  that  when ''the 
white-winged  reapers  come  "  he  may  be  found  worthy. 

"  For  thy  eternal  living  wells, 
None  stained  or  withered  shall  come  near  ; 
A  fresh,  immortal  green  there  dwells, 
And  spotless  white  is  all  the  wear." 

Except  for  its  exotic  form,  he  might  well  have  written  Miss 
Rossetti's  roundel,  which  begins  : 

"  Whiteness  most  white.     Ah  !  to  be  clean  again 
In  mine  own  sight  and  God's  most  holy  sight ! 
To  reach  through  any  flood  or  fire  of  pain 
Whiteness  most  white," 

This  well-loved  epithet  contains  his  characteristic,  a 
paradisal  sense  of  bright  innocence,  glad  and  debonair 
amid  the  dewy  fragrance  of  the  garden;  and  upon  the 
other  side,  the  sullying  of  the  whiteness,  the  eclipse  of 
light,  the  gloom  of  a  great  storm  and  darkness,  the  black- 
ness and  heaviness  of  the  shadow  of  death  and  sin.  The 
present  writer  once  began  to  count  how  often  "light"  and 
"night"  rhyme  together  in  Vaughan,  but  gave  it  up  in 
weariness.  The  two  words,  in  both  literal  and  analogical 
application,  are  his  incessant,  his  inveterate  themes. 

"  A  darting  conscience  full  of  stabs  and  fears ; 
No  shade  but  yew  ; 
Sullen  and  sad  eclipses,  cloudy  spheres  j— 
These  are  my  due. 


HENRY   VAUGHAN,    SILURIST  275 

But  He  that  with  His  blood  (a  price  too  dear) 

My  scores  did  pay, 
Bid  me,  by  virtue  from  Him,  challenge  here 

The  brightest  day. 
Sweet,  downy  thoughts,  soft  lily  shades,  calm  streams, 

Joys  full  and  true. 
Fresh,  spicy  mornings,  and  eternal  beams  ; — 

These  are  His  due." 

He  is  passionately  sincere  in  his  poems  of  adoration  and 
repentance,  but  never  a  gasping  devotee  or  groaning  pietist ; 
it  is  always  "  in  Thy  Light  shall  we  see  light,"  and  we  have 
glimpses  of  the  glory  now.  Unlike  his  brother  Thomas, 
the  famous  student  and  master  of  occult  science,  he  is 
content  with  the  magia  naturalis  of  the  world  revealed  by 
imagination  and  by  faith.  His  valleys  and  fields  suffice 
for  him,  their  peacefulness  and  wonder : — 

"They  are  the  meek's  calm  region,  where 
Angels  descend  and  rule  the  sphere  ; 
Where  Heaven  lies  leiger,  and  the  Dove 
Duly  as  dew  comes  from  above." 

Earth  has  its  own  magic  and  enlightenment,  for 

"  — here  in  dust  and  dirt,  O  here 
The  lilies  of  His  love  appear  ! " 

We  hardly  regret  that  he  had  no  Izaak  Walton  to  give  us 
the  brief  and  happy  chronicle  of  his  days ;  it  is  pleasant  to 
make  our  own  portrait  of  the  recluse  upon  the  banks  of 
Usk.  "  An  ingenious  person,  but  proud  and  humorous  "  ; 
so,  says  Anthony  k  Wood,  the  neighbours  thought  him. 
Most  Welshmen  of  any  genius  are  that :  we  know  that  both 
George  Herbert  and  his  brother,  of  Cherbury,  were  so. 
But  Vaughan  must  also  have  had  the  "  pride  and  humours  " 
of  a  man  living  in  the  lonelier  ways  of  thought,  where  few 
could  follow;  his  eyes  discerned,  his  ears  caught,  things 
viewless  and  inaudible  to  others ;  to  him,  as  to  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  his  own  uneventful  life  seemed,  like  all  things 
else,  *'  a  miracle."     His  poetry  has  been  forgotten ;  Hazlitt 


276  POST   LIMINIUM 

and  Hallam  do  not  deem  it  worth  the  mention ;  his  tomb 
at  Llansantfread  has  been  desecrated.  He  would  not  have 
greatly  cared  about  his  fame  and  fortune  here,  after  he  had 
"  gone  into  the  world  of  light,"  after  his  prayer  had  been 
heard : — 

"O  Father  of  eternal  life,  and  all 
Created  glories  under  Thee  ! 
Resume  Thy  spirit  from  this  world  of  thiall 
Into  true  liberty." 

THOMAS   A  KEMPIS 

[T/ie  Daily  Chronicle,  September  28,   1901 ;    The  Anti-Jacobin^  July 
25,  1891.] 

The  saints  from  the  Doubting  Apostle  onward,  who  bear 
the  name  of  Thomas,  form  a  remarkable  company.  To 
take  but  three,  there  is  the  Angelic  Doctor  of  Aquin,  prince 
of  theologians,  consecrator  of  Aristotle  to  the  service  of 
Christian  philosophy ;  there  is  the  indomitable  Thomas  of 
Canterbury,  martyr  for  the  rights  of  the  Church ;  there  is 
Thomas  More,  Lord  Chancellor,  martyr  for  the  supremacy 
of  the  Holy  See.  But  there  is  one  Thomas  whose  influence 
has  extended  over  the  world,  who  has  sunk  into  the  hearts 
of  innumerable  Christians  outside  his  Church ;  whose  chief 
work  can  be  read  in  the  tongues  of  the  Near  East  and  of 
the  Far :  his  full  name  is  Thomas  k  Kempis.  .  .  . 

After  all,  it  is  by  the  affections  that  men  become  powerful 
and  become  lovable :  by  the  humanity  of  their  spirit  more 
than  by  the  strength  of  their  intellect.  Cor  ad  cor  loquitur : 
heart  to  heart  speaketh.  It  may  be  a  pitiful  confession,  but 
it  is  true,  that  they  are  the  world's  spiritual  masters  who  tell 
us  of  things  irreducible  to  forms  of  logic.  Each  age  has  its 
own  passions  and  desires,  wants  and  sorrows ;  unformulated 
truths  are  always  at  work,  inarticulate  feelings  are  always  on 
the  watch  to  speak.  No  one  fully  knows  what  new  spirit 
has  come  upon  men,  and  is  thus  moulding  them  in  silence  ; 
but  all  dimly  believe  that  the  world  is  preparing  for  some 


THOMAS   A    KEMPIS  277 

great  change,  of  which  those  strange  impulses  and  convic- 
tions are  the  heralds.  And  to  some  one  man  who  is  instinct 
with  prophecy,  to  some  one  word  thrown  into  the  air  and 
upon  the  waters,  is  given  the  power  to  change  the  world 
and  to  rule  the  hearts  of  men. 

Now  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  no  writers  have  less  influ- 
ence upon  the  world  than  professed  moralists  and  systematic 
teachers  of  ethics.  Aristotle  accepted,  they  are  a  barren 
race,  historically  interesting  but  practically  unimportant. 
No  one  now  is  greatly  concerned  in  the  doctrines  of  the 
English  moralists :  even  Shaftesbury  and  Butler,  Cudworth 
and  Adam  Smith,  Mandeville  and  Hutchinson,  have  lost 
their  power  of  preaching.  They  are  men  who  contemplate 
human  nature  not  at  large,  but  at  a  particular  time ;  they  are 
children  of  their  century.  The  "  spectators  of  all  time  and 
of  all  existence,"  as  Plato  calls  them,  have  nothing  of  this 
parochial  and  circumscribed  authority ;  they  are  men  who 
would  be  at  home  in  any  country  and  at  any  time.  Were 
Thomas  h  Kempis  living  now,  can  we  doubt  what  would  be 
his  life  and  influence  ?  We  should  hear  the  same  counsels, 
given  in  a  new  way  but  full  of  the  old  spirit ;  the  same  gentle 
command  to  think  of  the  value  of  life  in  the  light  of  faith ; 
to  be  at  rest  and  peace  in  this  noisy  and  uncertain  world ;  to 
meditate  and  to  pray.  How  is  it  that  this  Flemish  monk, 
with  his  mediaeval  accents,  has  the  power  to  draw  men's 
hearts  to  him  in  our  vast  and  restless  cities  ?  What  is  it 
that  forces  us  to  listen  with  reverence  when  Carlyle  speaks 
in  all  his  anger  and  his  contempt  ? — to  turn  with  sympathy 
and  with  affection  to  the  pathetic  voice  of  Arnold,  mourning 
and  consoling  at  once? — to  do  what  Mr.  Ruskin  bids  us, 
and  work  honestly  and  well,  though  in  another  way  than 
his  ?  It  is  only  the  sense  that  these  men  know  what  is  in 
man :  all  the  virtue  and  the  vice,  the  gain  and  the  loss,  the 
pleasure  and  the  pain.  It  matters  not  at  all  that  we  cannot 
always  agree  with  them.  Against  Carlyle  we  may  believe  in 
democracy :    against  Arnold   in  Catholicism  :   against  Mr. 


278  POST   LIMINIUM 

Ruskin  in  the  supremacy  of  the  Greek  genius.  What  does 
it  matter  ?  No  more  than  historical  error  in  the  Scriptures 
vitiates  a  true  faith  in  them.  If  an  impression  be  indeed 
the  precious  thing  that  certain  folk  think  it,  then  the  impres- 
sion of  great  men's  greatness,  their  impress  upon  their  cen- 
tury, is  the  best  impression  of  all.  .  .  .  No  one,  it  has  been 
said,  can  prove  the  virtue  of  patriotism  or  the  beauty  of  a 
sunset,  but  no  one  doubts  them.  Just  so,  the  inspirers  of 
the  world  are  not  they  who  impose  laws,  but  they  who  win 
hearts :  it  was  the  secret  of  Newman.  And  for  that  very 
reason  certain  persons  are  loud  in  protest  against  his 
"  elusive  logic,"  and  "  Jesuitical  subtilty,"  and  "  alluring 
sophistry."  We  can  but  answer  Cor  ad  cor  loquitur ; 
Newjiian's  arguments  on  this  and  that  may  not  compel  us, 
but  himself  may.  And  the  inspirers  of  the  world  form  a 
company  of  gracious  or  commanding  men,  champions,  by 
their  very  names  and  memories,  against  degrading  views  of 
life.  As  was  said  by  Thomas  a  Kempis  long  ago,  before 
Luther  was,  or  Rousseau,  Hume,  or  Schopenhauer:  "  Oportet 
te  iransire  per  ignem  etaquam,  aniequam  veneris  i)i  refrigeriuin." 
.  .  .  Thomas  h  Kempis  is  uncanonized  yet;  he  has  not 
been  "  raised  to  the  altars  of  the  Church,"  and  no  public 
devotion  may  be  addressed  to  him.  It  is  to  be  lamented  ; 
and  yet  it  is  in  keeping  with  the  humility  and  self-withdrawal 
of  him  whose  favourite  precept,  for  himself  and  others,  was 
Ama  nesciri,  "Love  to  be  imknown."  The  majority  of 
persons  if  asked  what  they  do  know  of  him,  would  answer 
that  he  wrote  T/ie  Imitatio7t  of  Christ.  Many  of  them,  if 
told  for  the  first  time  that  the  authorship  of  no  work  ever 
written  has  been  so  much  contested,  might  be  disposed  to 
say  that  if  k  Kempis  did  not  write  it  he  ceased  to  interest 
them,  he  had  no  longer  a  claim  upon  their  love  or  upon  a 
special  place  in  their  memory.  But  the  man  and  his  way 
of  life  were  infinitely  touching  and  sweet,  quite  apart  from 
the  authorship  of  the  Imitation,  now  quite  settled  for  all 
scholars  who  can  appreciate  evidence.  .  .  .  It  is  a  beautiful 


THOMAS   A   KEMPIS  279 

life :  a  life  with  its  spiritual  troubles  and  bodily  trials,  but 
a  life  of  mutual  charity,  of  entire  simplicity,  of  gentle  order. 
There  is  nothing  to  offend  even  the  least  reasonable  haters 
of  asceticism  and  the  monastic  ideal;  Thomas  and  his 
brethren  had  common-sense  and  a  sense  of  humour,  two 
things  without  which  piety  can  become  distressing  and  even 
perilous.  "  I  dare  not  tell,"  wrote  Tennyson  to  his  future 
wife,  "how  high  I  rate  humour,  which  is  generally  most 
fruitful  in  the  highest  and  most  solemn  human  spirits. 
Dante  is  full  of  it ;  Shakespeare,  Cervantes,  and  almost  all 
the  greatest  have  been  pregnant  with  this  glorious  power. 
You  will  find  it  even  in  the  Gospel  of  Christ."  And  one 
day,  when  a  lady  spoke  to  him  of  Shelley's  social  ideals,  he 
exclaimed  :  "  Shelley  had  not  common-sense  ! "  "  Well," 
rejoined  the  lady,  "but  had  Christ  common-sense?" 
"  Christ  had  more  common-sense  than  you  or  I,  Madam  ! " 
said  Tennyson.  His  genuine  humanity  has  won  for  a 
Kempis  his  universal  hearing.  A  "  religious,"  writing  solely 
for  followers  of  the  monastic  life,  he  yet  appeals  to  the 
noisy  world  beyond  the  cloister,  making  felt  his  message 
of  peace  through  renunciation.  Doubtless,  he  has  his 
danger  for  the  unwary  reader,  who  forgets  that  men  and 
women  in  the  world  must  read  him  for  their  own  purposes, 
with  a  difference,  nmtatis  mutandis.  For  lack  of  this 
understanding,  the  Imitation  has  been  called  "  a  manual  of 
sacred  selfishness";  and  even  Mr.  Coventry  Patmore  is 
somewhat  inconsistent,  when  he  writes,  learned  in  mysticism 
and  the  contemplative  life  though  he  was  : — 

"  It  has  struck  me  often  lately  that  h.  Kempis,  whom  you  are  daily 
reading  now,  cannot  be  read  with  safety  without  remembering  that  he 
wrote  his  book  expressly  for  the  use  of  monks.  There  is  much  that  is 
quite  unfit  for  and  untrue  of  people  who  live  in  the  ordinary  relations 
of  life.  I  don't  think  I  like  the  book  quite  so  much  as  I  did.  There 
is  a  hot-house,  egotistical  air  about  much  of  its  piety.  Other  persons 
are  ordinarily  the  appointed  means  of  learning  the  love  of  God,  and  to 
stifle  human  affections  must  be  very  often  to  render  the  love  of  God 
impossible." 


28o  POST   LIMINIUM 

And  yet,  what  thousands  of  human  souls,  alien  from 
the  creed  of  a  Kempis,  and  dissimilar  to  one  another, 
have  loved  his  gentle  and  stern  wisdom !  The  Imitation, 
said  Dr.  Johnson,  "  must  be  a  book,  as  the  world  has 
opened  its  arms  to  receive  it."  No  two  human  beings  could 
well  be  less  like  each  other  than  Rachel,  the  great  and 
terrible  actress,  and  Gordon,  the  "soldier  saint"  of  Khar- 
toum. Yet  the  Imitation  was  his  study  under  the  shadow 
of  a  fierce  death  ;  and  Rachel  awaited  death, 

"  Soothing  with  thy  Christian  strain  forlorn, 
A  Kempis  !  her  departing  soul  outworn, 
While  by  her  bedside  Hebrew  rites  have  place." 

Or,  after  these  diversely  high  and  impassioned  souls, 
listen  to  the  dear  and  ridiculous  Boswell  speaking,  no  doubt 
sincerely,  of  "my  favourite  Thomas  a  Kempis."  Yes; 
this  obscure  child  of  the  cloister,  who  "sought  rest  in  all 
things,  yet  never  found  it,  save  in  nooks  with  books," 
makes  world-wide  appeal  with  his  doctrine  of  joy  in  self- 
denial  ;  wise  as  he  was  through  study,  his  best  wisdom  was 
of  the  heart.     As  George  Eliot  greatly  words  it : — 

"I  suppose  that  is  the  reason  why  the  small  old-fashioned  book, 
for  which  you  need  only  pay  sixpence  at  a  bookstall,  works  miracles 
at  this  day,  turning  bitter  water  into  sweetness  :  while  expansive  sermons 
and  treatises  newly  issued  leave  all  things  as  they  were  before.  It  was 
written  down  by  a  hand  that  waited  for  the  heart's  promptings ;  it  is 
the  chronicle  of  a  solitary,  hidden  anguish,  struggle,  trust,  and  triumph, 
not  written  on  velvet  cushions,  to  teach  endurance  to  those  who  are 
treading  with  bleeding  feet  on  the  stones.  And  so  it  remains  to  all 
time  a  lasting  record  of  human  needs  and  human  consolations,  the  voice 
of  a  brother  who  ages  ago  felt,  and  suffered,  and  renounced,  in  the 
cloister,  with  serge  gown  and  tonsured  head,  with  much  chaunting  and 
long  fasts,  and  with  a  fashion  of  speech  different  from  ours,  but  under 
the  same  silent  far-off  heavens,  and  with  the  same  passionate  desires, 
the  same  strivings,  the  same  failures,  the  same  weariness." 

'    Ante  obitum  mortujis,  post  obiiuni  vivns,  says  the  epitaph 
of  St.    Francis  :  Cor  ad  cor  loquitur,   was   the   motto  of 


THOMAS   A   KEMPIS  28 1 

Cardinal  Newman.  We  apply  both  to  Thomas  a  Kempis ; 
and  the  epitaph  is  true  of  him,  largely  because  the  motto  is 
true  also.  An  old  Japanese  poet,  ignorant  of  English, 
asked  an  Englishman  to  read  aloud  some  verses  of  Tenny- 
son; that  done,  he  said  that  he  felt  the  beauty  of  the 
poetry,  and  seemed  to  understand  it :  "  we  talk  to  each 
other  across  the  world."  So  has  a  Kempis  talked  and 
touched  the  hearts  of  even  those  to  whom  Catholic  doctrine 
is  a  foreign  tongue,  or  a  dead  language,  which  they  have 
not  learned.  That  he  should  appeal  to  Englishmen  is 
natural.  Michelet  has  said,  and  was  mistaken,  that  a 
striking  testimony  to  a  certain  unsusceptibility  in  the 
spiritual  character  of  the  English  is  afforded  by  the  fact 
that  the  Itnitatmi  has  never  been  ascribed  to  English 
authorship.  He  was  wrong,  both  in  his  supposed  fact  and 
in  his  inference  therefrom.  There  is  a  marked  likeness 
between  the  devotional  and  mystical  writers  of  the  Rhine- 
land  or  of  the  Netherlands,  and  those  of  mediaeval  England  : 
such,  for  example,  as  that  wonderful  anchorite,  Richard 
Rolle  of  Hampole.  They  have,  for  all  their  soaring  ecstasies, 
a  common-sense  quietude  and  simplicity,  quite  unlike  the 
almost  fierce  or  savage  splendour  of  Spanish,  the  delicate 
and  laughing  poetry  of  Italian,  saintly  writers.  It  costs 
most  Englishmen  some  conscious  or  unconscious  effort  to 
relish  Saint  John  of  the  Cross  or  Saint  Bonaventure; 
Thomas  b,  Kempis  comes  home  to  them.  Coleridge  says 
of  the  mystics  that  "  they  kept  alive  the  heart  within  the 
head  "  ;  h,  Kempis  can  do  that  for  many  who  do  not  love, 
as  Sir  Thomas  Browne  loved,  to  "  lose  themselves  in  an 
O  altitudo  ! "  An  Eastern  parable  tells  of  one,  a  lover  of 
God  and  man,  who  came  to  the  Divine  Beloved's  door, 
and  knocked.  "Who  is  there?"  asked  a  Voice.  "It  is 
I."  The  Voice  made  answer  :  '*  This  house  will  not  hold 
Me  and  thee."  The  lover  went  out  into  the  desert  to  fast 
and  pray.  After  a  year  of  solitude  and  silence  he  knocked 
again.     "  Who  is  there  ?  "     "  It  is  Thyself !  "  and  the  door 


282  POST   LIMINIUM 

was  opened.  That  is  the  burden  of  the  teaching  k  Kempis ; 
as  M.  Maeterlinck  puts  it:  "Our  Hves  must  be  spent  seeking 
our  God,  for  God  hides ;  but  His  artifices,  once  they  be 
known,  seem  so  simple  and  smiUng  ! " 

The  late  Mr.  Stevenson,  in  lines  equally  felicitous  in 
manner  and  false  in  matter,  thus  described  the  Trappist 
house,  which  housed  him  and  his  donkey : — 

"  Aloof,  unhelpful,  and  unkind. 
The  prisoners  of  the  iron  mind, 
Where  nothing  speaks  except  the  bell, 
The  unfraternal  brothers  dwell." 

Well !  Thomas  h.  Kempis,  if  his  portrait  does  not  show 
him  to  have  worn,  like  Saint  Francis,  fades  hilaris,  certainly 
possessed  that  saint's  vvllus  benigfitis :  and  Dom  Scully's 
book  about  him  portrays  a  monastic  family  of  winning 
homeliness  and  charity  j  a  family  of  "  brothers  "  anything 
but  "  unbrotherly."  You  could  imagine — let  us  seem  daring 
and  say — Izaak  Walton,  spending  a  placid  week  or  so,  as 
the  guest  of  Mount  St.  Agnes,  and  quitting  it,  full  of  grateful 
praise  and  admiration  of  its  peaceful  charm,  its  healthy 
laboriousness,  its  tranquil  studiousness,  its  unostentatious 
and  genial  piety.  Dr.  Erasmus,  true  Catholic,  and  therefore 
unsparing  satirist  of  corruptions  in  Catholic  life,  would  have 
felt  it  a  life  congenial  to  him  in  its  scholarly  and  quiet 
dignity;  even  the  reforming  Luther,  born  ten  years  after 
the  death  of  ^  Kempis,  could  have  detected  there  no 
occasion  for  vituperative  revolt.  A  gentle  beauty,  with  an 
essential  sternness  as  its  secret,  belongs  to  the  man — very 
much  a  man — who  did  not,  like  Savonarola,  fly  to  the 
cloister,  with  a  great  line  of  Virgil  upon  his  lips,  bidding 
him  cast  off  the  dust  of  his  shoes  against  a  degraded  world, 
but  who  sought  it  in  ardent  humility,  and  lived  in  it  a  life 
which  has  resulted  in  spiritual  joy  to  thousands.  We  do 
not  claim  for  Thomas  ii  Kempis  that  he  was  a  great  man  ; 
yet,  in  Browning's  words  : 


THE   AGE   OF    DRYDEN  283 

"The  little  less,  and  how  much  it  is  ! 
The  little  more,  and  what  worlds  away  !  " 

Thomas  k  Kempis  has  that  "  little  more,"  and  how  high 
it  places  him  among  the  saints !  "  what  worlds  away " 
from  us ! 


THE   AGE   OF  DRYDEN* 

\The  speaker,  March  21,  1S96.] 

The  forty  years'  literature  discussed  by  Dr.  Garnett  con- 
tains little  or  nothing  that  is  of  first  importance  and  rank, 
the  venerable  figure  of  Milton  excepted ;  and  he  was  but 
among  the  last  in  time,  as  he  was  among  the  greatest  in 
genius,  of  the  Elizabethans.  These  forty  years  contain 
three  chief  and  notable  things  :  the  work,  and  its  significance, 
of  Dryden  in  verse  and  prose  ;  the  Restoration  drama ;  and 
a  number  of  precious  personalities,  as  those  of  Walton, 
Pepys,  Evelyn,  Bunyan,  Temple,  Aubrey,  Wood.  But 
Dryden  at  his  strongest,  Congreve  at  his  artfullest,  any 
pleasing  personality  at  its  richest  or  sweetest,— they  cannot 
hope  to  rival  the  ages  of  Shakespeare  and  Bacon,  or  of 
Wordsworth  and  Keats ;  and  between  the  latter  age  and 
their  own  comes  the  age  of  exquisite  finish  and  grace, 
precision  and  order.  Take  them  how  we  may,  they  remind 
us  of  greater  ages  past  and  to  come ;  they  are  "  wandering 
between  two  worlds."  Dryden's  verse  is  neither  Pope's 
nor  Spenser's;  his  prose  neither  Addison's  nor  Browne's; 
he  has  the  ancient  qualities  tempered  with  the  new ;  he  is 
full  of  echoes  from  old  times,  and  the  shadows  of  coming 
events  are  over  him.  The  wonder  of  him,  his  special 
praise,  is  his  excellence  under  these  conditions.  Pope 
"  learned  versification  wholly  from  Dryden's  works  " ;  Gray 
declares,  "if  there   is  any  excellence   in   my   numbers    I 

*  The  Age  of  Dryden.     By  R.  Garnett,  LL.D.     (London:   Bell  & 
Sons,  1S96.) 


284  POST   LIMINIUM 

learned  it  wholly  from  that  great  poet " ;  says  Leigh  Hunt, 
'^  Dryden  was  the  last  English  poet  who  studied  versification, 
or,  in  another  word,  mnnbers,  which  are  the  soul  of  it."  In 
his  own  way  he  has  been  a  poet's  poet,  and  only  fellow 
craftsmen  can  fully  appreciate  his  art.  And  then,  as  Gold- 
smith has  it,  "  his  excellences  were  not  confined  to  poetry 
alone.  There  is  in  his  prose  writings  an  ease  and  elegance 
that  have  never  yet  been  so  well  united  in  works  of  taste 
and  criticism."  All  his  greater  work  is  wrought  out  grandly, 
massively,  richly ;  most  of  it,  as  Johnson  aptly  distinguishes, 
is  "great  and  bulky,"  much  of  it  "rich  and  splendid."  In 
Landor's  phrase  :  "  Though  never  tender  nor  sublime.  He 
wrestles  with  and  conquers  Time  " ;  he  is,  with  his  kinsman 
Swift,  more  strong  than  sweet,  more  vehement  than  noble  : 
a  master  of  language,  wielding  it  with  superb  energy  and 
animation,  delighting  in  his  strength,  with  nothing  small 
about  him  in  virtue  or  in  vice.  He  is  the  supreme  English 
satirist  and  controversialist  in  verse :  his  ironies  and  argu- 
ments succeed  one  another  in  his  rolling,  sonorous  lines 
like  huge,  leaping  waves.  Pope's  nice,  neat  touches,  "  ex- 
quisitely fine,"  are  the  steps  of  a  dancing-master,  in  com- 
parison with  this  mighty  movement.  Dryden  is  altogether 
one  of  the  Jonsons  and  Johnsons,  sealed  of  the  tribes  of 
Ben  and  Sam  :  a  dictator,  magnificently  imperious ;  a  man 
of  great  thews  and  muscles,  whose  very  failures  are  power- 
ful. This  thunderer  of  heroic  couplets  and  majestic  Alex- 
andrines wrote  lovely  lyrics ;  he  had  an  ear  for  the  harmonies 
of  Chaucer :  he  could  build  the  lofty  rhyme  in  the  elaborate 
ode.  We  have  to  wait  for  Collins  and  Gray  before  we  find 
such  another  poet. 

Dr.  Garnett  has  given,  then,  to  his  book  the  only  possible 
title :  it  is  the  Age  of  Dryden.  It  is  distinctly  not  the  age 
of  Congreve,  Farquhar,  Vanburgh,  Wycherley,  and  the 
other  famous  men  of  comedy ;  it  would  be  equally  true  to 
call  it  the  age  of  the  Royal  Society,  or  the  age  of  the  great 
preachers,  or  the  age  of  the  social  philosophers,  or  the  age 


THE   AGE   OF   DRYDEN  285 

of  the  dissenting  divines.  For  it  was  an  age  of  infinite 
variety  and  ferment :  if  the  Court  and  its  environs  were  an 
English  France,  and  poUte  London  a  Vanity  Fair,  there 
were  still  the  Englands  of  Puritanism,  of  grave  Anglicanism, 
of  refined  scholars  and  serious  thinkers,  of  decent  country 
gentlemen  and  reputable  men  of  affairs.  That  Versailles- 
Alsatia  was  not  all  England ;  nor  must  we  push  too  far  any 
argument  upon  the  morals  of  society  drawn  from  its  amuse- 
ments. A  relative  of  Scott,  returning  to  him  a  novel  by 
Aphra  Behn,  wrote  in  1821 :  "Is  it  not  a  very  odd  thing 
that  I,  an  old  woman  of  eighty  and  upwards,  sitting  alone, 
feel  myself  ashamed  to  read  a  book  which,  sixty  years  ago, 
I  have  heard  read  aloud  for  the  amusement  of  large  circles 
consisting  of  the  first  and  most  creditable  society  in 
London?"  Said  Dr.  Johnson:  "No,  sir,  I'rior  is  a  lady's 
book."  It  is  a  simple  fact,  but  often  ignored,  that  the  most 
delicate-minded  and  pure-lived  women  of  past  ages  have, 
as  Thackeray  puts  it,  joined  in  talk  which  would  be  too 
much  for  men  none  too  squeamish  or  rigid,  to-day.  A 
great  part  of  the  dramatic  licence  upon  the  Restoration 
stage  was  conventional,  a  tradition  from  the  stage  of  ancient 
Rome,  an  adaptation  from  that  of  contemporary  Paris; 
intrigue  leads  to  mirthful  situations,  to  witty  dialogue,  to 
cross  purposes,  to  all  manner  of  agreeable  things :  and 
Lamb's  contention,  that  the  scenes  of  these  comedies  are 
laid  in  a  fairyland,  is  but  a  whimsical  exaggeration.  Not, 
as  Dr.  Garnett  points  out,  that  the  dramatists  intended  any 
such  thing;  but  they  busied  themselves  with  types,  with 
"humours,"  rather  than  with  human  nature.  And  there 
is  another  consideration,  too  little  remembered  :  the  astonish- 
ing dearth  of  literary  amusement,  of  "light"  literature. 
There  are  thousands  to-day  whose  natural  instinct  for 
relaxation  and  amusement  is  satisfied  by  novels,  magazines, 
reading  of  many  kinds.  We  are  constantly  hearing  that  we 
have  no  conversation,  no  music,  no  public  shows,  no  social 
arts :  may  not  the  very  abundance  of  books  now,  the  lack 


286  POST    LIMINIUM 

of  them  in  former  times,  have  a  very  real  connection  with 
the  difference  between  those  times  and  ours?  Folk  have 
met  for  chamber  music,  for  conversation,  who  to-day  would 
be  reading  novels  at  home ;  men  sit  and  read  newspapers 
in  village  inns  who  would  have  been  at  dance  on  the  green. 
The  literature  of  prose  fiction,  the  daily  publication  of 
interesting  news,  are  still  things  of  comparative  youth ;  for 
"light"  reading,  as  we  understand  it,  as  apart  from  verse, 
our  Restoration  ancestors  were  almost  in  the  same  case  as 
theirs  before  the  invention  of  printing.  The  voluminous 
romances,  the  epigrams  and  satires,  the  old  chronicles  and 
the  newer  essays,  could  not  have  been  to  them  what  the 
novelists,  from  Richardson  and  Defoe  to  Mr.  Meredith  and 
Mr.  Stevenson,  have  been  for  their  descendants.  The  stage 
was  theirs;  and  a  metropolitan  stage,  patronised  by  a 
brilliant  and  not  strait-laced  society,  gave  them  gaiety  of  all 
kinds,  from  boisterous  fun  to  subtle  wit.  Nowadays,  much 
is  written  and  read,  without  blame,  which  would  not  be 
tolerated  upon  the  stage ;  it  was  not  so  with  the  stage  of 
Charles  II.  To  us  the  picture  of  those  audiences  in  front 
of  that  stage  suggests  that  the  times  were  grossly  vicious 
and  the  people  grossly  shameless ;  we  forget  the  conditions 
of  that  age,  and  of  ours,  when  we  so  exaggerate.  If  they 
were  somewhat  shameless,  we  are  somewhat  shame-faced. 
Grown  men  and  women  read,  and  harmlessly  read,  what 
they  would  not  read  aloud  :  in  those  days  such  a  distinction 
was  hardly  understood. 

In  many  ways  these  forty  years  were  a  most  serious  time. 
Locke,  Newton,  Cudworth,  Tillotson,  Algernon  Sidney, 
Burnet,  Bentley, — these  are  names  of  weight  in  the  history 
of  thought.  But,  in  a  sense,  no  one  more  happily  illustrates 
the  danger  of  false  judgment  than  Pepys.  A  busy,  practical, 
intelligent  man  of  affairs,  interested  in  sciences  and  arts,  a 
good  type  of  the  cultivated  public  servant, — that,  and  that 
alone,  we  should  have  thought  him,  but  for  the  Diary. 
And,  did  we  know  him  merely  from  the  lighter  and  more 


THE   AGE   OF   DRYDEN  287 

amusing  portions  of  the  Diary,  we  should  think  him  an 
engaging  fribble,  a  gossiping  dog,  a  disreputable  fellow,  to 
be  half  liked,  half  pitied.    Both  sides  of  him  are  true.   This 
predecessor  of  Mr,  Goschen,  this  ally  of  an  earlier  naval 
Duke  of  York,  this  President  of  the  Royal  Society,  was  all 
these  things ;  and  our  knowledge  of  the  fact  should  make 
us  pause  in  passing  judgment  upon  the  age.     Pepys  was  no 
quite  ordinary  man;  the  existence  of  the  amazing  Diary 
proves  it.     But  what  the  Diary  records  is,  take  it  bit  by  bit 
and  separately,  common  enough ;  and  the  impression  of  the 
whole  is  unspeakably  strange.     If  Pepys  could  be  so  good 
and  so  bad,  so  shrewd  and  so  silly,  so  small-minded  and  so 
liberal-minded,  yet  seem  to  his  contemporaries  nothing  un- 
usual, it  must  have  been  that  they  were  more  like  him  than 
are  we.     How  many  characters  do  the  literature  and  history 
of  the  times   introduce   to  us !     How   many   scenes   and 
incidents  which  are  half  the  truth,  be  it  for  better  or  for 
worse  !     For  every  brilliant  blackguard  of  a  courtier,  whose 
one  redeeming  feature  was  his  wit,  there  must  have  been 
many  a  citizen  with   Pepysian   qualities,  not  a  few  with 
Waltonian.     And  of  the  courtiers  and  fine  gentlemen,  many 
must  have  been  Evelyns  in  many  things,  though  history  has 
better  preserved   their  escapades  than  their  good  points. 
It  is  a  picturesque  and  medley  age,  passing  from  the  old 
ways,  the  last  remnants  of  medisevalism,  to  the  modern 
days.     The  mighty  Dryden  is  its  great  literary  light,  a  great 
roaring  flame,  before  we  pass  to  the  teacups  and  the  wax 
candles,  and   little  Mr.  Pope  of  Twitnam,  who  sings   ot 
"  glorious  John  "  that  he 

"...  taught  to  join 
The  varying  verse,  the  full  resounulng  line, 
The  long  majestic  march,  and  energy  divine." 


:88  POST    LIMINIUM 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 


[T/ie  Academy,  ]zn.  lo,  1891  ;  nfem,  Dec.  II,  1897.] 
.  .  .  Both  the  Arnolds  have  had  an  influence  wide  and  pro- 
found ;  and  yet  the  influence  of  either  has  not  been  so  greatly 
felt  in  matters  immediately  educational  as  in  matters  inci- 
dental to  education.    Neither  was  a  theorist  in  pedagogy  of 
the  German  type ;  neither  has  bequeathed  us  treatises  upon 
methods  of  teaching,  nor  so  much  as  wished  to  revolutionise 
the  systems  which  they  found  prevailing.     But  both  were 
men  of  ideals,  who  valued  education  less  for  the  sake  of 
"  useful  knowledge "  than  for  its  work  in  the  formation  of 
character,  its   spiritual  relations  with   life.      When   critics 
wished  to  describe  unfavourably  a  disciple  of  Dr.  Arnold, 
they  described  an  "  earnest "  youth,  precociously  alive  to 
his   "  responsibilities,"  and   prematurely   absorbed   in   the 
"  problems  of  life."     When  they  wished  to  do  the  same  by 
a  follower  of  Matthew  Arnold,  they  spoke  of  "  supercilious 
culture,"  and  "  dilettante  trifling,"  and  a  sense  of  superiority 
to  the  mass  of  men.    The  caricatures  are  not  so  extravagant 
as  to  defeat  their  own  object :  and  they  bear  testimony  to 
the  truth,  that  both  father  and  son,  in  their  various  works 
and  ways,  did  aim  at  influencing  the  character,  at  training 
the  disposition,  at  opening  the  mind's  eye,  rather  than  at 
cramming  the  mind.     But  such  work  as  that  is  of  necessity 
indirect,  and  has  little  connection  with  scholastic  method. 
As  educationalists,  in  the  narrower  sense  of  the  term,  the 
Arnolds  were  largely  Conservative.     Liberals  as  they  were, 
neither  had  a  particle  of  sympathy  with  Benthamism  and 
Broughamism  and  the  "  common-sense  "  of  the  "  practical 
man."     They  were  idealists,  even  Utopians  at  times.     Con- 
sider their  views  of  Church  and  State.     Dr.  Arnold  advo- 
cated an  Established  Church  embracing  all  Christian  sects, 
with  their  distinctive  beliefs  and  rituals.     His  son  dreamed 
of   an  undogmatic  Anglican   Church,  enriched  with    the 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD  289 

"poetry,"  the  imaginative  appeal  of  Catholicism.  And 
who  shall  say  which  of  these  fancies  be  the  wilder,  the 
more  impossible,  the  more  unthinkable  ?  Both  men  were 
reformers  by  nature :  the  one  enthusiastic  and  ardent,  the 
other  contemplative  and  ironical;  and  so  the  father  was 
something  of  a  Savonarola,  the  son  much  of  an  Erasmus  : 
natures  foredoomed  to  a  certain  beautiful  failure,  despite 
their  plentiful  success.  They  cared  for  the  things  of  the 
spirit,  and  such  men  are  never  quite  victorious. 

Hawkins,  the  great  Provost  of  Oriel,  prophesied  that 
Dr.  Arnold,  if  elected  to  Rugby,  "  would  change  the  face 
of  education  all  through  the  public  schools  of  England." 
If  that  be  taken  to  mean  that  he  would  raise  the  standard 
of  scholarship,  as  Butler  of  Shrewsbury  raised  it,  or  make 
large  innovations  in  the  quantity  and  quality  of  subjects 
taught,  the  prophecy  was  unfulfilled.  Dr.  Arnold  was  a 
good,  but  not  a  great,  scholar,  nor  was  he  a  fervent  advocate 
of  "  the  modern  side."  But  if  it  means  that  he  brought  a 
new  spirit  and  a  quickening  life  into  the  work  of  the  public 
schools,  the  Provost  was:  a  true  prophet.  Arnold,  with  his 
historical  imagination  and  sympathies,  his  vital  sense  of 
citizenship  and  social  life,  his  vivid  apprehension  of  moral 
law  revealed  in  past  and  present,  made  school  work  educa- 
tive rather  than,  as  heretofore,  almost  wholly  instructive. 
His  conception  was  that  of  Milton,  of  Coleridge,  of  his 
friend  and  foe,  Newman :  a  large  and,  in  the  classical 
sense,  a  generous  training,  which  should  awaken  the 
faculties,  and  fit  them  for  a  due  and  right  discharge  of 
life's  duties  and  obligations,  by  contact  with  the  best 
thought,  the  best  beauty,  the  best  experience  of  mankind. 
He  had  a  thoroughly  Greek  sense  of  education  as  a  pre- 
paration for  citizenship,  first  and  foremost :  and  for  citizen- 
ship as  he  understood  it  in  the  light  of  Christianity.  To 
him  Christianity  had  no  other  aspect  or  meaning  than  the 
social ;  and  to  work  for  the  well-being  of  society  in  the 
Christian  spirit  was  the  whole  duty  of  man.     For  such  boys 

u 


290  POST    LIMINIUM 

as  those  who  came  under  his  charge  at  Rugby,  he  believed 
that  a  classical  training,  liberally  and  lovingly  given,  was 
the  best  possible,  in  view  of  their  future  positions  in  the 
body  politic,  the  English  Christian  commonwealth.      So, 
while  far  from  neglecting  the  more   technical  and   orna- 
mental side  of  classical  education,  he  cared  supremely  for 
its  awakening  influence^  its  appeal  to  the  imagination  and 
the  mind.     He  was  well  aware  of  the  truth  of  Coleridge's 
saying  against  the  utilitarian  school  of  Brougham:  "One 
constant   blunder   of  these  New   Broomers,    these   Penny 
Magazine  sages  and  philanthropists,  in   reference  to  our 
public  schools,  is  to  confine  their  views  to  what  school- 
masters teach  the  boys,  with  entire  oversight  of  all  that 
the  boys  are  excited  to  learn  from  each  other  and  of  them- 
selves :  with  more  geniality  even  because  it  is  not  a  part 
of  their  compelled  school  knowledge."     Arnold  welcomed 
and  encouraged  all  such  self-education  and  self-culture  not 
merely  for  its  own  sake,  but  for  the  zest  and  interest  which 
it  adds  to  the  school  work  proper.     In  all  this  he  was  a 
pioneer,  though  schoolmasters  before  him  had  not  entirely 
kept  to  the  dry-as-dust  track ;  and  if,  as  is  the  case,  there  is 
to-day  no  public  school  in  which  lessons  arc  divorced  from 
life,  and  the  various  branches  of  learning  are  kept  apart 
from  each  other  in  watertight  compartments,  the  credit  is 
Dr.  Arnold's.     Rugby  was  his  kingdom,  and  he  strove  to 
bring  all  parts  of  it  to  perfection  and  into  harmony :  his 
letters,  essays,  and  sermons  are  full  of  that  ideal. 

His  great  son's  educational  labours  of  a  direct  kind  lay 
among  the  children  of  the  poor,  as  inspector  of  elementary 
schools.  Not  the  least  valuable  aspect  of  them  is  bound 
to  fade  away  with  time  :  we  mean  the  singular  charm,  con- 
sideration, and  encouraging  kindliness  of  manner,  to  which 
all  teachers  and  managers  who  met  him  bear  ready  witness. 
His  most  abiding  legacy  is  his  series  of  reports  upon  the 
states  and  systems  of  primary  and  secondary  education  at 
home   and    abroad,  reports  full  of   a    wise   lucidity  and 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 


291 


persuasiveness.  He  was  all  for  the  humanising,  liberalising, 
spiritualising  side  of  education,  a  hater  of  pedantry  and 
formality,  a  champion  of  the  imaginative  and  the  suggestive, 
as  opposed  to  the  mechanical  and  the  lifeless  or  unvitalised. 
But  the  work  was  not  congenial  to  him,  and  his  sense, 
critical  and  poetical,  of  our  national  shortcomings  was  too 
personal  and  keen  to  be  entirely  appreciated  by  those  to 
whom  he  appealed.  Sir  Joshua  Fitch  praises  very  highly, 
but  no  whit  too  highly,  his  poems  and  his  purely  literary 
essays :  but  he  sees  clearly  that  such  a  man  was  not  an 
ideal  man  for  his  post,  or  rather,  it  may  be,  that  he  was  too 
ideal.  Matthew  Arnold,  with  cruel  truth  and  wit,  describes 
Maurice  as  "  beating  the  bush  with  profound  emotion,  but 
never  starting  the  hare."  And  yet,  mutato  nomine  de  te : 
Arnold,  at  least,  beat  many  bushes,  but  the  public  took  no 
notice  of  the  hares.  That  huge  lower  middle  class,  the 
Philistines,  are  absolutely  unchanged  by  his  pleadings  and 
protests  and  exposures.  They  still  delight  in  licensed 
victuallers'  schools,  still  prefer  Eliza  Cook  to  Milton,  still 
clamour  for  their  deceased  wives'  sisters,  still  cling  to  an 
unlovely  Puritanism.  Matthew  Arnold's  Olympian  irony 
and  smiling  melancholy  have  delighted  those  of  his  own 
social  standing,  but  have  not  so  much  as  begun  to  in- 
fluence the  masses  of  parents,  whose  children  go  (which 
is  admirable)  to  the  public  primary  schools,  or  (which  is 
detestable)  to  "  commercial  academies."  In  so  far  as 
there  is  any  popular  demand  for  an  improved  and  organised 
secondary  education,  its  strength  lies  in  the  industrial  need 
of  improved  and  developed  technical  education,  not  in  any 
adoption  of  Arnold's  own  reiterated  pleas  :  not  for  the  sake 
of  a  great  national  system  of  organised  teaching,  broadly 
and  finely  conceived,  but  under  the  pressure  of  commercial 
competition  from  without.  Perhaps  he  was  too  unwilling 
to  recognise  how  much  of  what  he  respected  in  the  average 
English  life  rests,  and  must  long  continue  to  rest,  upon 
much  of  what  he  most  abhorred  :  upon  distrust  of  State 


292  POST   LIMINIUM 

interference,  upon  attachment  to  narrow  forms  of  religion, 
upon  a  self-sufficient,  dogged  Puritanism.  His  sense  of 
humour,  happily  incurable,  forbade  him  to  tolerate  national 
qualities  of  so  absurd  an  unamiableness,  and  his  delicate 
laughter  was  not  quite  conciliatory ;  many  people  felt  that 
no  man  could  always  be  so  exquisitely  right  as  Mr.  Arnold 
believed  himself  to  be.  They  felt  with  Charlotte  Bronte, 
at  the  first  meeting  :  "  Striking  and  prepossessing  in  appear- 
ance, his  manner  displeases  from  its  seeming  foppery.  I 
own  it  caused  me  at  first  to  regard  him  with  regretful 
surprise ;  the  shade  of  Dr.  Arnold  seemed  to  me  to  frown 
on  his  young  representative."  Not  every  one  could  dis- 
cover, as  Charlotte  Bronte  could,  that  there  was  a  sincere 
and  simple  nature  beneath  the  surface;  and  Arnold's 
chances  of  influencing  those  whom  he  chiefly  wished  to 
influence  were  hurt  by  misunderstandings  and  resentments. 
As  poet  and  literary  critic  his  fame  will  grow :  his  social 
writings  will  long  be  enjoyable,  but  are  not  likely  to  be 
efficacious.  "  How  many  fools  does  it  take  to  make  a 
public?"  asks  Chamfort.  In  England,  Carlyle  put  the 
estimate  at  several  millions :  a  terrible  public  to  conquer 
by  "sweetness  and  light"  ;  by  selections  from  Wordsworth, 
and  readings  in  Isaiah  !  Unlike  his  father,  Matthew  Arnold 
had  no  kingdom  of  his  own,  no  microcosm  to  fashion  as 
he  would :  his  educational  labours  were  general  and  dis- 
persive,— a  visit  here,  a  report  there;  now  an  article,  and 
now  a  lecture.  Yet  his  name  is  a  force,  his  convictions 
carry  weight,  at  least,  in  the  world  of  experts  and  idealists 
in  education :  his  writings  remain  to  impress  upon  us  the 
intensity  of  his  beliefs.  He  is  himself  an  example  of  what 
"  culture "  in  its  noblest  sense  can  do :  his  often  perfect 
poetry,  his  choice  and  pellucid  criticism,  are,  indeed,  the 
work  of  one  who  sought  to  acquaint  himself  with  "  the  best 
that  is  thought  and  known." 

.  .  .  Few  of  modern  times  have  been  of  truer  make  than 
this  father  and  this  son. 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  393 

II. 

The  more  complete  poems  of  Matthew  Arnold  are  little 
more  than  one  hmidred  in  number.  Of  these,  only  five 
are  of  considerable  length.  So  careful  and  discreet  an 
achievement,  during  some  forty  years,  ought  to  come  close 
upon  perfection :  and  this  it  does.  But  of  Arnold's  rare 
and  happy  qualities  we  will  speak  later ;  let  us  first  have 
done  with  his  few  and  venial  faults.  There  are  lines, 
phrases,  and  constructions,  not  perfectly  polished ;  and 
there  are  poems,  or  stanzas,  not  perfectly  poetical.  That 
is,  there  are  faults  of  expression  and  of  conception. 
Arnold,  as  Lord  Coleridge  tells  us,  had  a  most  imperfect 
ear  for  music.  Now,  while  no  one  questions  his  wonderful 
ear  for  the  cadence  of  verse,  it  is  equally  true  that  his  sense 
for  melody  sometimes  failed  him.  Within  one  short  poem 
occur  two  such  discordant  lines  as  "  There  the  pines  slope, 
the  cloud  strips,"  and  "  Where  the  high  woods  strip  sadly." 
It  explains  Arnold's  avowed  preference  for  the  rhythm  of 

"Siehst  sehr  sterbeblasslich  aus," 

over  the  rhythm  of 

••  Que  dit  le  ciel  k  I'aube,  et  la  flamme  k  la  flame  ?  " 

Again,  the  construction  is  at  times  forced,  as  in 

"  That  furtive  mien,  that  scowling  eye, 
Of  hair  that  red  and  tufted  fell  "— 

where  the  second  line  "is  only  poetry  because  it  is  not 
prose."  These  technical  faults  are  few,  and  they  are  less 
troublesome  than  the  foolish  affectations  of  much  modern 
workmanship.  The  second  fault,  faults  of  conception,  is 
more  serious.  Arnold  rarely  fails  to  write  in  a  spirit  of 
singular  loftiness  and  beauty  ;  he  is  rarely  neglectful  of  his 
own  precept : 

"  Such,  poets,  is  your  bride,  the  Muse  !  young,  gay. 

Radiant,  adorn'd  outside  ;  a  hidden  ground 

Of  thought  and  of  austerity  within." 


294  POST   LIMINIUM 

But,  at  times,  the  thought  is  unadorned  and  the  austerity 
far  from  radiant.     To  take  an  example  : 

"  '  Religious  fervours  !  ardour  misapplied  ! 

Hence,  hence,'  they  cry,  *  ye  do  but  keep  man  blind  ! 
But  keep  him  self-immersed,  preoccupied, 
And  lame  the  active  mind  ! ' " 

Contrast  that,  in  its  nakedness,  with  the  ornament  and  the 
radiance  of  the  preceding  poem  :  a  poem  full,  too,  of 
austere  thought : 

"  So,  in  its  lovely  moonlight,  lives  the  soul. 

Mountains  surround  it,  and  sweet  virgin  air  ; 
Cold  plashing,  past  it,  crystal  waters  roll : 
We  visit  it  by  moments,  ah,  too  rare  ! " 

At  once  we  feel  that  the  first  lines  are  not  interesting,  not 
heightened,  not  touched  with  emotion ;  that  the  second  are 
no  less  beautiful  than  elevated. 

These  things  are  worth  a  few  words,  because  the 
admirers  of  Arnold  are  in  danger  of  being  held  his  wor- 
shippers also,  unless  they  show  themselves  aware  of  his 
faults.  Arnold,  great  and  admirable  as  he  is,  is  no  more 
perfect  than  is  Gray,  Milton,  or  Sophocles ;  but  he  stands 
above  the  first,  and  the  others  were  his  most  successful 
masters. 

Arnold's  poems  are  of  two  kinds :  there  are  the  narra- 
tive poems,  whether  dramatic  or  otherwise  ;  and  the  lyrical, 
emotional,  or  meditative  poems.  Now,  it  is  observable 
that  Arnold  is  at  his  best  in  poems  neither  long  nor  short : 
in  poems  equal  in  length  to  the  average  Hebrew  psalm, 
the  average  Greek  ode.  No  doubt  there  are  exceptions : 
"  Sohrab  and  Rustum  "  among  the  longer  poems,  "  Requi- 
escat"  among  the  shorter,  are  nearly  faultless.  But,  for 
the  most  part,  it  is  in  such  poems  as  "  Thrysis,"  "  A  Summer 
Night,"  "Stanzas  from  the  Grande  Chartreuse,"  that  we 
find  the  true  Arnold;  not  in  "Balder  Dead,"  "Progress," 
"  Revolutions."     In  other  words,  Arnold,  to  use  his  own 


MATTHEW    ARNOLD  295 

phrase,  had  not  "  the  architectonics  of  poetry,  the  faculty 
which  presides  at  the  evolution  of  works  like  the  Aga- 
memnon or  Zear."  Nor  was  he  in  the  literal  sense  a 
singer,  such  as  was  Heine  or  Catallus.  Rather,  his  quality 
was  meditative ;  he  accepted,  at  least  in  practice,  Words- 
worth's definition  of  poetry,  that  it  is  "  emotion  remem- 
bered in  tranquillity."  But  it  may  be  objected  that  Arnold 
is  genial,  exultant,  even  rapturous ;  that  he  wrote  nothing 
in  the  least  like  "  The  Excursion."  That  is  true ;  but  let 
us  consider  a  little  more  curiously.  Arnold  was  fond  of 
national  distinctions,  qualities  of  race  and  temperament. 
Were  one  to  distinguish  Arnold's  own  qualities,  the  con- 
clusion might  be  of  this  kind.  From  the  Greek  culture, 
he  took  a  delight  in  the  beauty  of  life  and  of  fine  imagi- 
nation ;  from  the  Hebrew  genius,  a  sense  of  reverence  and 
meditation :  from  the  French,  a  certain  grace  and  lucidity 
of  spirit ;  from  the  German,  a  steady  seriousness  of  mind. 
By  descent  he  was,  in  part,  a  Celt :  that  gave  him  a 
'*  natural  magic  "  of  emotion  and  of  soul ;  while  from  his 
English  origin  he  took  that  daring  common-sense  which 
enabled  him  to  hold  in  harmony  these  various  qualities. 
Trained  in  those  chosen  places  of  beauty  and  high  tra- 
dition, Winchester  and  Oxford,  with  all  the  strength  of  his 
father's  influence  at  Rugby,  he  was  always  attached  to  the 
English  ideal :  to  the  ideals  of  Milton  and  of  Burke.  A 
scholar,  a  man  of  the  world,  a  government  official,  his 
affections  were  not  narrow,  not  provincial ;  but  they  were 
not  cosmopolitan,  not  unsettled.  His  heart  was  at  home 
in  the  quiet  dignity  and  peace  of  an  English  life,  among 
the  great  books  of  antiquity,  and  the  great  thoughts  of 
"  all  time  and  all  existence."  Hence  came  his  limitations  : 
not  from  prejudice,  nor  from  ignorance,  but  from  a  scrupu- 
lous precision  and  delicacy  of  taste.  No  one  loved 
France  more  than  he  ;  no  one  abhorred  more  than  he  "  the 
great  goddess  Aselgeia."  He  reverenced  the  German 
seriousness,   depth,   moderation   of  life  and   thought;   he 


296  POST    LIMIXIUM 

disliked  and  ridiculed  pedantry,  awkwardness,  want  of 
humour  and  of  grace.  In  all  his  criticisms,  the  same 
balance  between  excess  and  deficiency  appears  :  he  was  a 
true  Aristotelian.  And  so,  when  it  is  said  that  Arnold  was 
not  a  poet  of  profound  philosophy,  not  a  thinker  of  con- 
sistency, or  not  a  man  whom  we  can  classify  at  all,  the 
only  answer  is  a  distinguo.  It  was  Arnold's  work  to  find 
beauty  and  truth  in  life,  to  apprehend  the  meaning  and 
moral  worth  of  things,  to  discriminate  the  trivial  from  the 
grave,  and  to  show  how  the  serene  and  ardent  life  is  better 
than  the  mean  and  restless.  His  poetry,  then,  is  not 
didactic ;  but  meditative,  in  the  classical  sense,  it  is.  Lord 
Coleridge — in  those  papers  which  make  us  regret  that  he 
has  "  to  law  given  up  what  was  meant  for  mankind," — is  of 
opinion  that  Arnold's  meditative  poems  are  not  destined 
to  live,  "not  from  any  defect  of  their  own,  but  from  the 
inherent  mortality  of  their  subjects."  Yet,  surely  these 
poems  are  more  than  records  of  a  transitory  emotion,  the 
phase  and  habit  of  an  age.  Such  a  description  would 
apply  to  Clough  :  his  mournful,  homesick,  desultory  poems 
are  indeed  touched  with  decay,  because  they  are  composed 
without  care,  in  no  wide  spirit  of  contemplation ;  reading 
them  we  do  not  think  of  "  Sophocles  by  the  Aegean,"  nor 
of  the  lacrimae  rerum.  But  Arnold's  thoughts  and  emo- 
tions are  profoundly  human ;  we  cannot  say  of  them  that 
only  an  Oxford  man,  under  such  and  such  influences,  at 
such  and  such  a  time,  could  have  felt  them  in  youth 
and  expressed  them  in  after-life.  True,  their  immediate 
tone  is  that  of  one  "  touched  by  the  Zeit-Geist "  in  the 
latter  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  ;  but  their  fundamental 
character  is  common  to  all  times.  For  Arnold  is  human ; 
and  what  is  humanism  but  the  belief 

' '  that  nothing  which  has  ever  interested  living  men  and  women  can 
wholly  lose  its  vitality  :  no  language  they  have  spoken,  no  oracle  beside 
which  they  have  hushed  their  voices,  no  dream  which  has  once  been 
entertained  by  actual  human  minds,  nothing  about  which  they  have 
ever  been  passionate,  or  expended  time  and  zeal  ? " 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD  297 

Arnold,  if  this  be  so,  was  himself  a  true  humanist ;  and  no 
true  humanist  will  ever  forget  him.  No  doubt  the  Christian 
Year  or  the  Essay  oti  Man  have  lost  their  charm  and  their 
significance;  but  we  read  the  one  as  the  memorial  of  a 
great  phase  of  sentiment,  and  the  other  for  its  brilliant 
setting  of  a  very  tarnished  theory.  Much  more  will 
Arnold  live  in  these  grave  and  lovely  poems,  which  have 
so  little  in  them  of  mere  transient  feeling.  Whatever  be 
the  future  estimate  of  Arnold's  poems,  there  is  no  doubt 
of  their  singular  charm  now.  They  possess  the  secret 
of  great  verse,  its  power  of  haunting  the  memory,  and  of 
profoundly  satisfying  it.  Sad  as  are  some  of  them, 
their  melancholy  is  true  to  nature,  and  leaves  us  calm ; 
rejoicing  as  are  others,  they  never  soar  out  of  sight, 
away  from  life.  But  they  give  a  view  of  nature  and  of 
life  as  contemplated  by  a  mind  of  great  sympathy  and 
insight,  acquainted  with  the  choice  spirits  of  ancient 
civility,  and  with  the  living  emotions  of  our  own  age.  No 
hymn  to  Dolores  can  so  touch  us  as  the  lines  "  To  Mar- 
guerite " :  the  feverish,  antiquarian  rhetoric  of  the  one 
may  thrill  the  nerves  and  leave  us  tired ;  the  pure  beauty 
and  the  austere  passion  of  the  other  appeals  to  every 
faculty  in  us,  and  leaves  a  sense  of  the  beauty  of  human 
sorrow.  Paradoxical  as  it  may  sound,  there  is  something 
very  hieratic  about  Arnold :  his  apprehension  of  the 
beauty  of  holiness,  his  love  for  what  is  clear  and  lofty  in 
the  pleasures  of  thought,  his  constant  service  of  medi- 
tation. 

"  Ah,  les  Voix,  mourez  done,  mourantes  que  vous  etes  : 
Sentences,  mots  en  vain,  metaphores  mal  faites, 
Toute  la  rhetorique  en  fuite  des  peches, 
Ah,  les  Voix,  mourez  done,  mourantes  que  vous  etes  !  " 

Arnold  would  not  have  liked  M.  Verlaine's  poetry;  but 
those  lines  express  much  of  Arnold's  mind.  The  false 
worship  of  words,  the  conventional  acceptance  of  phrases, 
all  the  spurious  wisdom  in  the  world,  he  fought  against, 


298  POST   LIMINIUM 

and  conquered  much  of  it ;  and  there  is  no  one  left  to 
take  his  place  in  the  struggle  against  vulgarity  and  impos- 
ture :  no  voice  like  his  to  sing  as  he  sang  of  calm  and 
peace  among  the  turbulent  sounds  of  modern  life. 


CARDINAL  NEWMAN 
Mr.  Hutton's  Life,  and  the  Letters  to  1845  * 

[T/ie  Academy t  Nov.  8,  1890;  The  A titi- Jacobin,  Jan.  31,  1 89 1.] 


.  .  .  Every  Life  of  Newman  must,  of  necessity,  be  based 
upon  the  Apologia ;  and  Mr.  Hutton  has  almost  achieved 
the  impossible  ;  he  has  almost  succeeded  in  abridging  that 
masterpiece.  There  is  one  biography  in  our  language,  and 
Boswell  wrote  it ;  the  one  autobiography  Newman  has 
written.  From  this  wonderful  and  pathetic  record  Mr. 
Hutton  has  compiled  a  fair  and  judicious  narrative ;  fair, 
because  he  suppresses  nothing ;  judicious,  because  we  can 
discern  the  truth,  the  prevailing  motive,  in  different 
passages  and  circumstances. 

But  the  most  original  and  important  part  of  this  book  is 
contained  in  two  chapters ;  those  upon  "  Newman's  Alleged 
Scepticism  "  and  upon  the  "  Theory  of  Development."  It 
is  here  that  Mr.  Hutton  does  good  service  to  history  and  to 
common-sense.  He  makes  it  clear  that  Newman  was  not 
an  infidel  at  heart,  given  over  to  superstition  voluntarily ; 
and  that  Newman's  conception  of  theology  was  not  eclectic, 
personal,  and  forced,  but  scientific,  historical,  and  authori- 
tative. The  charge  of  suppressed  scepticism  has  been 
brought  against  Newman  by  writers  and  thinkers  of  very 

*  Cardinal  Newman  (in  the  English  Leaders  of  Religion  Series). 
By  R.  H.  Hutton.  London.  (Methuen.)  1890.  2.  Letters  and 
Correspondence  of  Joh?!  Henry  Newman,  during  his  Life  in  the  English 
Church :  with  a  brief  autobiography.  Edited,  at  Cardinal  Newman's 
request,  by  Anne  Mozley.     2.     (Longmans.)     1890. 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  299 

various  minds:  by  Prof.  Huxley,  for  example,  and  by 
Mr.  Swinburne.  The  latter,  as  a  philosophical  logician,  we 
may  safely  ignore;  but  the  weighty  assertions  of  Prof. 
Huxley  require  an  answer,  and  Mr.  Hutton  has  furnished  it, 
to  the  satisfaction  of  all  fair  and  open  minds.  To  all  such 
charges,  inexplicable  to  those  acquainted  with  Newman's 
work,  it  is  enough  reply  to  quote  the  Apologia ; — 

"  Many  persons  are  very  sensitive  of  the  difficulties  of  Religion  ; 
I  am  sensitive  of  them  as  any  one ;  but  I  have  never  been  able  to  see 
a  connexion  between  apprehending  those  difficulties,  however  keenly, 
and  multiplying  them  to  any  extent,  and  on  the  other  hand  doubting 
the  doctrines  to  which  they  are  attached.  Ten  thousand  difficulties 
do  not  make  one  doubt,  as  I  understand  the  subject :  difficulty  and 
doubt  are  incommensurate." 

Or,  again,  in  The  Grammar  of  Assent^  the  most  careful 
distinctions  are  drawn  between  true  and  false  belief.  For 
example  : — 

"  This  practice  of  assenting  simply  on  authority,  with  the  pretence 
and  without  the  reality  of  assent,  is  what  is  meant  by  formalism. 
To  say  '  I  do  not  understand  a  proposition,  but  I  accept  it  on 
authority '  is  not  formalism ;  it  is  not  a  direct  assent  to  the  propo- 
sition, still  it  is  an  assent  to  the  authority  which  enunciates  it." 

Or,  to  take  a  decisive  passage  : — 

"  Of  the  two,  I  would  rather  have  to  maintain  that  we  ought  to 
begin  with  believing  everything  that  is  offered  to  our  acceptance, 
than  that  it  is  our  duty  to  doubt  of  everything.  This,  indeed,  seems 
the  true  way  of  learning.  In  that  case,  we  soon  discover  and  discard 
what  is  contradictory ;  and  error  having  always  some  portion  of 
truth  in  it,  and  the  truth  having  a  reality  which  error  has  not,  we 
may  expect  that  when  there  is  an  honest  ;  purpose  and  fair  talents, 
we  shall  somehow  make  our  way  forward,  the  error  falling  off  from 
the  mind  and  the  truth  developing  and  occupying  it." 

The  chapter  upon  the  "  Theory  of  Development,"  while 
far  from  accepting  Newman's  argument  in  its  entirety,  yet 
seizes  upon  its  magnificent  characteristics,  its  historical 
breadth,  its  intuition  into  spiritual  tendencies  and  logical 
issues.     The  book  has  met  with  many  and  able  antagonists, 


300  POST   LIMINIUM 

such  as  Mozley,  Hare,  and  the  learned  Archer  Butler ;  but 
we  feel,  in  reading  them,  that  they  are  struggling  against  the 
stream,  grasping  at  straws,  trying  to  arrest  the  progress  of 
history  and  of  growth.  Newman's  "  spontaneous  perception 
of  truth/'  to  use  his  own  words,  led  him  infallibly  right ;  not 
logic,  in  its  formal  sense,  not  reasoning  and  learning,  of 
themselves,  but  a  subtle,  spiritual  genius  was  his  guide.  It 
is  curious,  painful,  and  profitable  to  read,  beside  the 
Cardinal's  Apologia,  his  brother's  Phases  of  Faith.  In  that, 
too,  we  recognise  the  instinctive  view,  the  swift  following  of 
thought  after  thought,  the  faithful  obedience  to  changed  con- 
victions. In  truth,  there  was  no  resting-place  for  either,  and 
there  is  none  for  anymanof  consistency  between  the  extremes; 
and  Newman  displays,  what  Anglicans  and  Protestants  do 
not,  the  thoroughness  and  the  completeness  of  belief.  That 
is  to  say,  he  refused  to  listen  to  the  compromises  which  in- 
dolence or  self-will  suggests.  If  faith  in  God  imply  Chris- 
tianity, if  Christianity  imply  Catholicism,  if  Catholicism 
imply  endless  difficulties  to  the  human  mind,  Newman 
would  have  the  believer  in  God,  in  virtue  of  his  faith  and  of 
its  issues,  accept  the  difficulties  without  hesitation,  as  parts 
of  a  necessary  mystery.  In  Mr.  Birrell's  Obiter  Dicta,  those 
sayings  by  the  way  which  we  may  afford  to  disregard, 
occurs  this  pathetic  exclamation  : — 

"Oh,  Spirit  of  Truth,  where  wert  thou,  when  the  remorseless  deep 
of  superstition  closed  over  the  head  of  John  Henry  Newman,  who 
surely  deserved  to  be  thy  best-loved  son  ?  " 

Had  Newman  ever  wasted  his  time  upon  such  writings,  we 
can  imagine  what  would  have  been  his  gentle  contempt  and 
pity  for  this  foolish  rhetoric.  It  was  just  such  an  attitude 
towards  faith  and  towards  Catholicism  which  Newman 
constantly  deplored,  exposed,  dissected,  and  ridiculed : — 

"I  really  do  think  it  is  the  world's  judgment  that  one  principal 
part  of  a  confessor's  work  is  the  putting  down  such  misgivings  in  his 
p  enitents.     It  fancies  that  the  reason  is  ever  rebelling,  like  the  flesh ; 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  i-Oi 

that  doubt,  like  concupiscence,  is  elicited  by  every  sight  and  sound, 
and  that  temptation  insinuates  itself  in  every  page  of  letterpress,  and 
through  the  very  voice  of  a  Protestant  polemic.  When  it  sees  a 
Catholic  priest,  it  looks  hard  at  him,  to  make  out  how  much  there  is 
of  folly  in  his  composition,  and  how  much  of  hypocrisy.  But,  my 
dear  brethren,  if  these  are  your  thoughts,  you  are  simply  in  error. 
Trust  me,  rather  than  the  world,  M'hen  I  tell  you  that  it  is  no  difficult 
thing  for  a  Catholic  to  believe  ;  and  that  unless  he  grievously  mis- 
manages himself,  the  difficult  thing  for  him  is  to  doubt." 

To  criticise  Mr.  Hutton's  book  in  detail  would  be  to 
express  little  else  than  satisfaction  with  his  work ;  the  spirit 
of  intellectual  sympathy,  of  cordial  reverence  and  affection, 
which  animates  it,  is  unfailing.  But  Mr.  Hutton  is, 
naturally,  no  servile  admirer  of  Newman's  thoughts  and 
conclusions,  however  great  be  his  admiration  of  Newman's 
character  and  life.  And  there  is  one  point  upon  which  he 
is  constantly  insisting  ;  upon  Newman's  undue  exaltation  of, 
or  care  for,  dogma.  Such  a  passage  as  this  is  a  good 
example  of  many  similar  passages  : — 

"Dogma  is  essential  in  order  to  display  and  safeguard  the  revela- 
tion ;  but  dogma  is  not  itself  the  revelation.  And  it  is  conceivable 
that  in  drawing  out  and  safeguarding  the  revelation,  the  Church  may 
not  unfrequently  have  laid  even  too  much  stress  on  right  concep- 
tions, and  too  little  on  right  attitudes  of  will  and  emotions." 

There  is  a  difference  between  the  quiet  tone  of  Mr. 
Hutton  and  the  excited  fervour  of  Prof.  Francis  Newman ; 
but  we  are  reminded  of  the  latter's  outburst : 

"  Oh  Dogma  !  Dogma  !  how  dost  thou  trample  under  foot  love,  truth, 
conscience,  justice  !     Was  ever  a  Moloch  worse  than  thou  ?  " 

Surely  the  answer  to  Mr.  Hutton  is  that,  though  dogma  be 
not  revelation,  yet  revelation  is  dogma :  "  right  attitudes  of 
will  and  emotion  "  are  essential,  but  "  right "  in  relation  to 
what?  To  those  certainties^  moral  and  spiritual,  which 
exist  alike  in  conscience  and  in  revelation,  but  which 
conscience  cannot  formulate  without  revelation;  while 
revelation  is  revelation  of  divine  facts,  which  are  ordered 
and  systematised  by  the  science  of  theology.     Revelation 


302  POST   LIMINIUM 

without  dogma  is  a  blank;  dogmas  are  the  contents  of 
revelation  made  clear,  according  to  the  wants  of  time  and 
place,  by  an  authority  divinely  commissioned.  But  of  the 
whole  subject  there  is  no  finer  exposition  than  in  Newman's 
Idea  of  afi  University^  and  the  lectures  on  theology  con- 
tained there. 

There  are  two  points  inevitably  raised  by  any  book  or 
essay  about   Newman :  his   position  and   influence  as  an 
Anglican,  and  his  value  in  literature.     Upon  the  first  point 
it   is   not   necessary   to   say  much :    Secures   iiidicat  orbis 
terrarum.     But  there  has  grown  up  a  tendency  in  certain 
quarters  to  renounce   Newman  as  an  exponent  of  Angli- 
canism: to  assert  that  he  was  not  the  originator,  in  any 
sense,  of  the  Oxford  Movement.     It  was  Keble,  or  Pusey, 
or  Rose,  or  Alexander  Knox,  or  Hurrell  Froude ;  it  was 
any  one  rather  than  Newman.     Now  it  is  true  that  Words- 
worth was  not  the  first  poet  who  "  returned  to  Nature " 
after  the  days  and  the  school  of  Pope ;  it  is  true  that  Scott 
was  not  the  first  to  find  inspiration  in  mediaeval  romance ; 
it   is   true  that  Coleridge  was  not  the  first  to  introduce 
German  metaphysics.     But  it  is  pedantic  to  insist  upon 
these  absurd  and  trifling  truths;  and,  just  so,  it  is  foolish 
to   ascribe   to   any  other   man   the  place  of  teacher  and 
inspirer  held  by  Newman.     Burgon  has  striven  to  do  this ; 
but  the  general  voice  of  tradition  is  too  strong  for  him. 
Pattison,  Mr.  Mozley,  Mr.  Wilfrid  Ward,  Shairp,  Clough, 
Arnold   and   a   thousand   more,   testify   to   the   reality  of 
Newman's  supremacy.     He  alone  was  the  genius  of  Oxford 
for  the  first  half  of  this  century.     Contrast  with  him,  to 
name  only  the  dead,  Faber  and  Ward,  among  Catholics ; 
Keble  and  Pusey,  among  Anglicans.     Wordsworth  recog- 
nised in  Faber  the  gifts  of  a  great  poet.     Mill  praised  in 
Ward  a  subtle  and  powerful  logic.     The  great  merits  of 
Keble  and  Pusey  are  beyond  dispute.     But  all   four  are 
absolutely  insignificant  beside  Newman :  beside  the  man 
whose  mind  was  "  a  miracle  of  intellectual  delicacy,"  and 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  303 

his  presence  that  of  "a  spiritual  apparition."  For  Newman, 
all  his  life  through,  obeyed  the  command  of  Sir  Thomas 
Browne : 

"  Let  intellectual  tubes  give  thee  a  glance  of  things  which  visive  organs 
reach  not.  Have  a  glimpse  of  incomprehensibles,  and  thoughts  of 
things  which  thoughts  but  tenderly  touch.  Lodge  immaterials  in  thy 
head ;  ascend  unto  invisibles ;  fill  thy  spirit  with  spirituals,  with  the 
mysteries  of  faith,  the  magnalities  of  religion,  and  thy  life  with  the 
honour  of  God." 

To  be  "  a  man  of  one  book  "  is  a  proverb.  Certainly,  to 
the  present  writer,  the  thirty-six  volumes  of  Newman,  from 
the  most  splendid  and  familiar  passages  down  to  their 
slightest  and  most  occasional  note,  are  better  known  than 
anything  else  in  any  literature  and  language.  And  so  it  is 
difficult  to  criticise  those  who  do  not  acknowledge  in 
Newman  a  master  in  literature;  there  is  no  writer  whose 
mastery  seems  more  clear  and  indisputable.  Mr.  Austin 
has  lately  said  of  him  : 

"A  style  which  is  superb  in  its  vigour,  ease,  and  suppleness,  practically 
ceases  to  be  a  force  in  literature,  and  is  to  be  found  chiefly  in  theo- 
logical remains,  than  which  nothing  is  more  forbidding.  It  makes  me 
weep." 

To  the  last  words  we  can  but  say  tu  qjioqtic.  But,  apart 
from  the  bigotry  or  the  tastelessness  of  the  passage,  it  is 
not  even  true  that  Newman's  work  is  chiefly  theological ; 
that  is,  in  the  true  sense  of  theology.  There  are  twelve 
volumes  of  perfect  oratory,  not  in  the  main  theological,  but 
ethical  and  psychological;  there  are,  at  most,  but  seven 
volumes  of  professed  technical  theology.  The  rest  contain 
"  infinite  riches  "  :  satire,  humour,  romance,  criticism,  poetry, 
history;  he  has  composed  Ciceronian  dialogues;  he  has 
parodied  prize  poems ;  he  has  written  African  witch-chants ; 
he  has  satirised  newspaper  articles  and  public  speeches ;  he 
has  imitated  the  Greek  tragic  chorus;  he  has  enriched 
criticism  with  faultless  judgments.     To  him  I  turn  for  the 


304  POST   LIMINIUM 

truest  estimates  of  Byron  or  of  Cicero  ;  for  the  best  theory 
of  portrait-painting ;  for  the  subtlest  description  of  musical 
emotion.  Newman  was,  emphatically,  a  man  of  social 
habit,  and  his  books  are  more  full  than  Thackeray's  of 
worldly  knowledge.  And  all  this  wealth  of  matter  and 
thought  is  conveyed  in  a  style  of  singular  charm,  of  most 
strange  and  haunting  beauty.  ...  No  man  ever  combined 
so  much  beauty  of  character  with  so  much  beauty  of 
expression.  In  this  harmony  of  qualities  he,  like  his 
patron  Saint  Philip  Neri,  was  an  Athenian,  but  touched 
with  a  deeper  sentiment :  at  once  with  more  patience,  and 
more  passion. 

II 

"  It  has  been  so  long  said,"  wrote  Dr.  Johnson,  "as  to  be 
commonly  believed,  that  the  true  characters  of  men  may  be 
found  in  their  letters,  and  that  he  who  writes  to  his  friend  lays 
his  heart  open  before  him.  But  the  truth  is  that  such  were 
the  simple  friendships  of  the  '  Golden  Age,'  and  now  the 
friendships  only  of  children.  Very  few  can  boast  of  hearts 
which  they  dare  lay  open  to  themselves,  and  of  which,  by 
whatever  accident  exposed,  they  do  not  shun  a  distinct  and 
continued  view  ;  and  certainly  what  we  hide  from  ourselves 
we  do  not  show  to  our  friends.  There  is,  indeed,  no  trans- 
action which  offers  stronger  temptation  to  fallacy  and 
sophistication  then  epistolary  intercourse." 

These  sage  reflections  were  suggested  by  Pope's  letters ; 
applicable  as  they  are  to  Pope,  they  do  not  touch  Newman. 
"  The  true  life  of  a  man  is  in  his  letters,"  was  his  fixed 
opinion,  and  his  own  letters  confirm  it.  Now,  in  the  case 
of  a  man  whose  perfect  sincerity  is  not  questioned,  the 
records  of  his  life  from  childhood  up  to  middle  age  should 
enable  us  to  draw  a  harmonious  picture  of  his  mind  and 
character.  His  formal  works  tell  us  what  he  thought 
and  held  ;    his  informal  and  casual  utterance,  his  private 


CARDINAL    NEWMAN  305 

and  personal  history,  should  tell  us  what  he  was.     Concisely 
speaking,    Newman  had  two  chief  characteristics;    one  of 
them   a   mental   habit,    and    the    other    a    spiritual.      He 
possessed,  in  an  extraordinary  degree,  psychological  insight 
and  the  impulse  to  use  it ;    and  he  possessed  in  no  less 
powerful  a    degree   certain   moral   principles,  based   upon 
innate  conviction.     It  is  in  the  relations  of  the  psychological 
phenomena  to  the  moral  certainties,  and  in  his  power  of 
adjusting  them,  that  the  strength  of  Newman  lay.     On  the 
one   hand,  he  starts   from  the   moral   law   of  conscience, 
implying,  to  him,  the  existence  of  a  personal  God.     On  the 
other  hand,  he  has  a  profound  or  piercing  sense  of  mental 
states,  emotions,  and  tendencies,  which  must  be  brought 
into  harmony  with  the  supreme  conscience.     So  far,  New- 
man differs  only  in  degree  from  most  men  who  are  moral- 
minded  ;  his  distinction,  that  in  him  which  is  the  note  of 
his  greatness  and  the  secret  of  his  influence,  lay  in  his  ap- 
plication of  his  powers  and  principles.     We  recognise  in 
Pusey,  or  in  Ddllinger,  a  deep  religious  sentiment,  guiding 
a  great  historical  erudition ;    in  Keble  or  in  Faber  a  deep 
poetical  sentiment,  blending  with  a  fervent  religious  sense. 
But  Newman  had   more  than   this  :    he   had   an   absolute 
genius  of  the  rarest  kind.     It  appeals  in  one  especial  way  : 
in  his  complete  acceptance  of  the  facts  of  life  and  of  history, 
no  less  than  of  the  facts  of  the  individual  mind  and  soul,  as 
things  to  be  examined  by  the  critical  conscience.     Nothing 
is  isolated  :  nothing  stands  outside  the  region  of  conscience  : 
all  things  are  subject  to  the  supremacy  of  its  moral  law. 
In  a  man  of  limited  perception,  very  few  elements  compose 
the  sum  of  things ;    but  Newman,  physically  and  mentally, 
was  a  man  of  the   finest   and   most   delicate   perception, 
sensitive  and  emotional.     There  are  pages  in  these  volumes 
which  for  exquisite  refinement  of  analysis  might  have  been 
written  by  one  or   two  great   living   Frenchmen ;    minute 
accounts  of  mental  and  physical  states,  displaying  a  very 
genius  for  psychological  work.     There  are  curious  passages 

X 


3o6  POST    LIMINIUM 

of  self-description,  telling  us  how  conscious  he  was  of  his 
own  irony,  or  shyness,  or  vehemence,  and  of  their  effects 
upon  other  people.  There  are  passages  of  nature-description, 
full  of  magical  touches,  and  illustrating  his  susceptibility  to 
the  influence  of  season  and  place.  An  admirable  judge  of 
wine  ;  an  excellent  violinist ;  a  man  of  a  rare  feeling  for 
perfection  in  beauty,  material  or  spiritual.  This  is  an  age 
of  greater  sensibility,  more  governed  by  the  emotions  and 
the  desires,  than  any  other;  literature  abounds  with  sick 
and  morbid  beauty;  everywhere  men  are  drifting  from  one 
philosophy  of  doubt  to  another,  aware  of  their  own  futility, 
and  tired  of  all  thought  and  action.  They  feel,  to  quote 
Newman,  "those  indefinite,  vague,  and  withal  subtle  feel- 
ings which  quite  pierce  the  soul  and  make  it  sick."  But 
they  do  not  add  with  him :  "  What  a  veil  and  curtain  this 
world  of  sense  is  !  beautiful,  but  still  a  veil."  To  such  an 
age  comes  Newman,  and  sets  forth  a  solution  and  a  cure. 
Not,  as  some  have  said,  an  anodyne  or  opiate  ;  because 
Newman's  method  has  a  logical  consistency,  though  it  may 
not  use  the  logic  of  the  sciences.  No  doubt,  the  same 
thing  may  be  put  in  two  ways  :  we  can  say,  Christianity  and 
Catholicism  do  but  offer  us  what  we  would  like  to  have  ; 
or,  they  are  true  because  they  explain  and  complement  the 
phenomena  of  human  nature.  And,  it  would  seem,  the 
agreement  of  a  religious  faith  with  the  wants  and  capacities 
of  mankind  is  more  likely,  a  priori,  to  be  true  than  false. 
Strong  in  that  conviction,  Newman  laid  hold  upon  all  the 
varieties  of  human  nature,  all  the  developments  of  history, 
and  all  the  incidents  of  daily  life,  as  so  much  evidence  for 
the  truth  of  Christianity ;  and  all  this,  in  direct  obedience 
to  the  logic  of  conscience  and  of  spiritual  perception,  which 
furnished  him  with  a  test  and  touchstone  for  them  all. 
Like  Goethe,  he  was  "  resolute  to  live  "  in  harmony.  So 
that  he  has  a  claim  upon  the  consideration  of  the  age  in 
virtue  of  his  urbanity,  his  culture,  his  catholic  intelligence, 
such  as  other  religious  leaders  have  not. 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN  307 

The  letters  show  Newman  in  the  heat  and  toil  of  battle  : 
busy,  hard  at  work,  an  active  politician  of  the  English 
Church.  He  is  in  the  thick  of  every  fight ;  engaged  in 
endless  plans,  in  endless  work,  always  before  the  public. 
But  under  no  circumstances  does  he  lose  his  reverent 
manner,  nor  sacrifice  the  purity  of  his  inner  life.  So  simple, 
yet  so  subtile,  he  holds  a  unique  place  in  our  century  :  an 
example  of  entire  obedience  to  the  moral  law,  and  to  its 
intellectual  consequences,  at  the  cost  of  any  suffering. 
Had  he  been  a  recluse,  unsocial  in  temperament,  narrow  in 
comprehension,  he  would  have  been  little  to  admire;  but 
here  was  a  man  who  delighted  in  the  human  side  of  life,  in 
all  that  is  attractive  to  men.  Carlyle,  in  all  his  greatness, 
was  a  bigot,  to  whom  certain  sides  of  life  were  incompre- 
hensible :  his  influence  must  always  be  limited.  Newman, 
accepting  and  appreciating  all  sides  of  life,  shows  what  is 
the  true  harmony  of  all :  the  origin,  the  tendency,  the 
excellence,  or  the  danger,  of  every  thought  and  feeling. 
As  Saint  Augustine  in  the  Civitas  Dei,  or  Bishop  Butler  in 
the  Analogy,  so  Newman  takes  up  the  scattered  and  way- 
ward influences  of  his  day,  and  sifts  them  through  his 
conscience.  Like  them,  he  may  not  be  superseded  :  like 
them,  he  will  endure.  In  his  own  phrase  :  "  Every  thought 
I  think  is  thought,  and  every  word  I  write  is  writing." 


LONDON  :    PRINTED   BY  WILLIAM  CLOWES  AND   SONS,   LIMITED. 


The  Critical  and  Poetical  Work    of 
LIONEL    JOHNSON 


SOME  PRESS   OPINIONS 

"  ■  I/ionel  Johnson ' — says  a  writer  in  the  Academy  at  the  time  of  his  death — was 
a  scholar  by  instinct,  a  poet  by  longing,  and  a  critic  by  profession.  His  poetry  was 
subjective,  the  reflection  of  a  temperament  that  was  entirely  introspective.  Stately, 
austere,  mystical  by  turns,  three  themes  moved  him  to  enthusiasm  :  his  old  school, 
Winchester,  Oxford,  and  Ireland.  Mysticism,  whether  Catholic  or  Pagan,  always 
touched  his  muse  to  ,a  deeper  note.  A  re-reading  of  his  two  volumes  of  poems,  one 
published  in  1895,  when  he  was  twenty-eight,  the  other  in  1897,  vividly  recalls  the 
cloistral  medievalism  and  mysticism  of  his  mind."  He  further  speaks  of  Johnson's 
"  fine  and  enkindling  critical  work,  the  soaring  idealism,  the  pertment  allusiveness, 
and  the  scholarly  use  of  the  best  thought  of  the  world  that  this  rich  mind  employed  to 
colour  and  illumine  his  grave  theses." 

POEMS 

With  a  title-design  and  colophon  by  H.  P.  Horne. 
Printed  at  the  Chiswick  Press,  on  hand-made  paper. 
Sq.  post  8vo.     7  J.  6d.  tict. 

"  Full  of  delicate  fancy,  and  display  much  lyrical  grace  and  felicity." — Times. 

'•  An  air  of  solidity,  combined  with  something  also  of  severity,  is  the  first  im- 
liression  one  receives  from  these  pages.  .  .  .  The  poems  are  more  massive  than  most 
lyrics  are ;  they  aim  at  dignity  and  attain  it.  This  is,  we  believe,  the  first  book  of 
verse  that  JNlr.  Johnson  has  published  ;  and  we  would  say,  on  a  first  reading,  that  for 
a  first  book  it  was  remarkably  mature.  And  so  it  is,  in  its  accomplishment,  its 
reserve  of  strength,  its  unfaltering  style,  .  .  .  Whatsoever  form  his  writing  takes,  it 
will  be  the  expression  of  a  rich  mind  and  a  rare  talent." — Saturday  Review. 

"  It  is  at  once  stately  and  passionate,  austere  and  free.  His  passion  has  a  sane 
mood  :  his  tire  a  white  heat.  .  .  .  Once  again  it  is  the  Celtic  spirit  that  makes  for 
higher  things.  Mr.  Johnson's  muse  is  concerned  only  with  the  highest.  Her  flight 
is  as  a  winged  thing  that  goes  •  higher  still  and  higher,'  and  has  few  flutterings  nenr 
earth." — Irisli  Daiiy  Itidependent. 

*^,*  A  very  few  copies  remain  of  the  first  edition  of  Lionel  yohnsons 
first  volume  '  Foems. ' 

^Ireland  and  other  Foems  ^  jfohnson's  second  volume,  is  quite  011 1  of  print. 

SkLECTIONS     from    THE     POEMS     OF     LlONEL    JOHNSON. 

Royal  i6mo.     Cloth  \s.  6d.  ftet :  Wrapper  is.  net. 

'"'  It  was  the  fashion  at  one  time  to  say  that  Lionel  Johnson's  poems  were  academic 
exercises — a  fashion  that  possibly  arose  from  his  bemg  known  to  be  an  admirable 
and  learned  critic.  The  publication  of  this  volume  may  help  to  reverse  that  verdict. 
Though  there  is  little  call  to  weed  out  his  poems,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  editor 
has,  on  the  whole,  chosen  those  which  show  him  as,  first  and  foremost,  a  poet  of  a 
jjure  and  high  passion,  devoted  in  the  main  to  lost  causes,  remote  ideals,  and  a  poet, 
who,  in  spite  of  certain  wilful  pieces  of  crabbedness  and  tightness,  had  the  large  and 
simple  utterance  of  great  poetry." — Times  Literary  Sitppletnent. 

London  ;    ELKIN   MATHEWS,   Vigo  Street. 


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